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LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON.  N.  J. 


PRESENTED  BY 


The  Estate  of  Rev.  Robert  Williams 


BV  4832  .M26  1919 
McNeile,  A.  H.  1871-1933 
The  increase  of  God 


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THE    INCREASE    OF    GOD 


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LONDON,  NEW  YORK,  BOMBAY,  CALCUTTA,  AND  MADRAS 


THE 

INCREASE  OF  GOD 


BY 

A.    H.    MCNEILE,    D.D. 

REGIUS    PROFESSOR     OF    DIVINITY    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY 

OF    DUBLIN  ;    CHANCELLOR    OF    ST    PATRICK'S  ;    FELLOW 

OF    SIDNEY    SUSSEX    COLLEGE,    CAMBRIDGE 


WITH    AN    INTRODUCTION    BY 

THE    BISHOP   OF   LONDON 


"The  Head,  from  whom  all  the 
body,  being  supplied  and  knit  together 
through  the  joints  and  bands,  increaseth 
with  the  increase  of  God," — G)l.  ii,  19. 


NEW    YORK: 

LONGMANS,      GREEN      AND      CO. 

FOURTH    AVENUE    AND    30TH    STREET 

1919 


INTRODUCTION 

This  is  a  clear,  pointed,  pithy,  and  in  my 
opinion  a  very  delightful  little  book.  The 
author  all  through  it  pushes  home  his  main 
point  that  the  test  of  life  everywhere  is  growth, 
that  even  in  nature  such  growth  is  due  to  the 
Energy  of  God,  and  that  in  human  character 
growth  is  due  to  the  same  Energy,  but  with 
this  difference,  that  in  character  the  amount  of 
growth  attained  depends  upon  the  co-operation 
of  the  human  will. 

This  gives  us  a  true  and  very  ennobling 
idea,  expressed  on  p.  14:  '*My  growth  is  God's 
life  straining  after  self -fulfilment,  physically  in 
my  body,  spiritually  in  my  soul." 

This  recalls  a  most  inspiring  picture  in  an 
earlier  book  of  the  author's,  which  led  to  my 
inviting  him  to  write  the  present  one,  a  picture 
which,  I  found,  greatly  appealed  to  the  troops  at 
Salonica.  Man  is  the  expression  of  God. 
Just  as  a  symphony  lies  in  the  heart  and  mind 
of  the  composer  and  yet  must  find  expression. 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

and  the  composer  does  not  see  of  the  travail  of 
his  soul  and  is  satisfied  until  that  symphony 
rolls  out  before  heaven  and  earth,  so  the  love 
in  the  heart  of  God  must  express  itself  in  human 
life  and  human  love,  and  did,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  perfectly  express  itself  in  the  Beloved  Son. 
To  this  I  always  added  that  the  Church  exists 
to  play  to  heaven  and  earth  this  symphony  of 
the  love  of  God  ! 

The  theme  in  this  book  is  really  the  same 
thought  in  other  and  equally  beautiful  words. 
God  is  trying  to  fulfil  Himselfi  to  express 
Himself  in  me,  and  the  more  I  grow  the  more 
He  sees  of  the  travail  of  His  soul  and  is 
satisfied. 

But  if  the  book  provides  us  with  a  noble 
thought,  so  also  it  does  with  a  searching 
Lenten  question — am  I  growing  ? 

It  is  easy  enough  to  ask,  as  the  author  says, 
Do  I  go  to  church  regularly  ?  Do  I  go  to  the 
Communion?  Do  I  kneel  down  and  say  my 
prayers  ?  But  do  I  grow  ?  This  is  the  real 
test  of  character.     All  life  is  perpetual  motion. 

I  think  that  this  book  will  be  a  help  to  all 
of  us  to  try  and  answer  that  searching  question 
this  Lent. 

But  besides  the  main  question  pressed  upon 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

us  by  the  author,  light  is  thrown  upon  many 
subsidiary  difficulties,  e.g.,  how  to  account  for 
people  being  such  ''good  sorts"  without  any 
profession  of  religion.  With  great  force  the 
author  emphasises  the  childishness  with  which 
many  of  us  still  prefer  the  ''bright  penny"  to 
the  "dull  sovereign,"  and  the  positive  wicked-^ 
ness  with  which  we  foster  party  spirit :  "  I  am 
of  the  Church  Times,  I  of  the  Guardian^  I  of 
the  Challenge,  I  of  the  Record''  (p.  103). 

The  book  concludes  with  a  really  beautiful 
chapter  on  Prayer  and  the  offering  of  the 
Eucharist. 

"  Our  prayers  are  not  right  prayers,  if 
they  are  not  the  work  of  the  Divine  Spirit 
within  us,  wanting  that  God  wants."  "He  often 
waits  to  do  what  He  Himself  wants,  until  we 
pray  for  it,  and  thereby  apply  His  Energy  for 
the  purpose."  "Growth  in  Prayer,  then,  is 
growth  in  the  intensity  with  which  we  want 
what  God  wants."  "If  such  is  the  nature  of 
Prayer,  man  can  do  no  greater  work  for  God." 
"In  short,  to  put  it  as  simply  as  possible,  the 
more  holy  you  are,  the  more  will  your  prayers 
accomplish  "  (pp.  120,  121). 

These  are  all  noble  thoughts,  and  ought  to 
make  us,  as  a  diocese,  pray  better  ;  nay !   we 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

may  go  further,  they  ought  to  make  us  come 
to  the  Holy  Communion  regularly  and  **  armed 
with  a  great  pile  of  prayers  and  praises,  offer 
a  well-prepared  Eucharist,  something  that  it  is 
a  joy  to  offer  and  a  joy  to  God  to  receive " 
(p.  129). 

I  feel  certain  that,  if  we  take  in  and  live  out 
the  teaching  of  this  book,  both  as  individuals 
and  corporately  as  a  diocese  we  shall  grow  with 
*'  the  increase  of  God." 

A.  F.,  London. 

*Xmas  Eve^  19 18. 


THE  INCREASE  OF  GOD 


I.  LIFE 

The  English  word  "life"  has  three  pieces  of 
work  to  do  : — i.  We  speak,  for  example,  of  the 
"life  of  St  Paul,"  and  we  mean  roughly  the 
years  during  which  he  was  on  this  earth  as  a 
human  being,  and  the  way  in  which  he  spent 
them,  his  actions  and  experiences.  2.  All 
plants,  animals,  and  human  beings  possess,  or 
exhibit,  something  in  common  which  we  call 
''life";  and  at  death  we  say  that  "life  is 
extinct."  3.  The  Christian  religion  tells  us  of 
something  called  "life,"  eternal  life,  which  is 
not  extinguished  at  the  death  of  the  body.  But 
though  we  separate  these  three  in  thought — the 
temporal,  physical,  and  spiritual — they  are  not 
really  distinct ;  they  are  inextricably  bound 
together  in  a  complex  of  ideas  which  no  words 
can  define.     One  thing,  however,  we  can  say 


2  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

about  each  and  all  of  them :  life  involves  move- 
ment, change,  growth  ;  always,  universally,  in 
every  form  and  grade  of  existence  or  thought, 
to  be  static,  still,  motionless,  is  to  be  dead ; 
when  movement  ceases,  life  is  not.  In  the  life 
of  St  Paul,  action  and  experience  were  con- 
tinuously new,  as  the  onward  movement  of  a 
stream  of  water.  The  most  exhaustive  biography 
can  only  lift  the  veil  here  and  there,  and  give 
glimpses  at  successive  stages  of  progress.  The 
life  can  be  viewed  from  a  distance  as  a  single 
whole,  but  within  itself  that  whole  contained — 
or  rather  fulfilled  itself  by  means  of — perpetual 
motion.  And  the  same  is  true  of  the  so-called 
''physical  life"  of  plants,  and  animals,  and 
men.  The  expression  is  inaccurate ;  it  is  not 
the  life  that  is  physical.  The  life  itself  is 
something  utterly  indefinable,  in  fact  incon- 
ceivable ;  but  it  is  a  something  which  fulfils 
itself,  physically,  by  the  continuous  motion  of 
throwing  ofT  old  particles  and  gaining  new 
ones,  resulting  in  the  mystery  that  we  call 
''  growth."  We  cannot  see  the  movement ;  it 
is  far  too  small  for  our  dull  eyes  to  see.  But 
those   who  are  in   sympathy  with   nature  can 


LIFE  3 

feel  It,  especially  in  the  spring,  when  its  out- 
ward results  are  most  manifest  and  appealing. 
Climb  to  a  hillside,  undisturbed  by  civilization, 
on  a  warm,  still,  moist  morning  In  early  May, 
and  your  inner  spirit,  if  it  is  in  tune,  can  hear 
the  world  of  nature  growing ;  In  your  deepest 
depths  you  know  yourself  to  be  one  with  it  as 
it  groaneth  and  travaileth  together  in  the 
unceasing  pain  of  upward  pressure,  of  restless 
strain  and  yearning  after  ever  more  abundant 
life.  If  we  could  transcend  time,  and  could  view 
the  life  of  nature  as  a  single  whole,  we  should 
yet  realize,  as  we  realize  in  reviewing  the  life 
of  St  Paul,  that  it  fulfils  itself  by  perpetual 
motion. 

And  it  is  a  motion  intense,  ceaseless,  uni- 
versal, which  is  not  retarded,  or  diverted  from 
its  appointed  course,  by  any  adverse  power. 
The  throwing  off  of  the  old,  and  the  taking 
on  of  the  new,  continue  without  failure  and 
without  interruption  in  the  life  of  every  organ- 
ism, and  of  every  species  in  the  universe. 
It  is  a  life  in  which  order  Is  supreme,  with 
no  variableness  or  shadow  of  turning-  Throusrh 
every  infinitesimal  moment  of  time  we,  and  all 


4  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

other  organisms  in  all  the  multitudes  of  worlds, 
are  physically  putting  off  the  old  man  and 
putting  on  the  new.  And  all  that  chemical, 
biological,  and  physiological  research  can  do 
is  to  make  increasingly  clear  the  lines  along 
which  this  perpetual  motion  proceeds.  The 
mind  grows  dim  and  dizzy  when  we  try  to 
grasp  it  as  a  whole,  and  to  contemplate  the 
Mind  and  Will  which  preserve  this  order  in 
its  unimpeded  perfection  through  all  the  cycles 
of  the  ages,  '*  upholding — carrying  on — all 
things  by  the  utterance  of  His  power"  (Heb. 
i.  3).  The  glories  and  beauties  of  nature  can 
make  an  immediate  appeal  to  the  emotions  ; 
but  the  O7'deroi  its  life,  fulfilling  itself  by  growth, 
needs  deeper  and  more  concentrated  medita- 
tion if  it  is  to  be  grasped  vividly  and  on  a 
large  scale.  But  if  it  is  so  grasped  it  can 
thrill  us  to  the  core. 

I  hope  that  no  reader  of  these  pages  will 
brush  this  aside  in  the  desire  to  get  on  to  the 
more  devotional  and  scriptural  chapters.  If 
w^e  believe  that  it  is  God  who  is  moment  by 
moment  carrying  forward  nature's  growth — and 
no  Christian   can  mean  less   than    that  when 


LIFE  5 

he  speaks  of  Him  In  the  Creed  as  "  Maker  of 
heaven  and  earth  " — then  all  things  that  are 
written  In  the  book  of  the  generations  of  the 
heavens  and  the  earth  are  written  for  our 
learning.  To  leave  the  study  of  natural  science 
to  non-Chrlstlans  Is  to  omit  one  volume  of  the 
writing  of  God.  It  Is  the  only  volume  that 
Interests  some  students  ;  and  they  are  learning 
from  It  more  about  God  than  they  have  any 
Idea  of,  as  St  Paul  maintains  in  Romans  I.  20. 
But  the  Christian  ought  to  be  able  to  learn 
a  great  deal  more  than  they.  It  really  Is  a 
religious  duty  to  learn,  according  to  our  oppor- 
tunities, as  much  as  we  can  about  nature's 
growth,  in  order  to  enlarge  and  deepen  our 
conceptions  of  the  God  who  keeps  It  growing. 


2.  ENERGY 

But  the  v/ord  'MIfe"  has  a  third  duty  to 
perform.  It  has  to  express  the  inexpressible, 
a  something  to  which  only  Man,  the  highest 
product  of  nature,  attains.  To  distinguish  it 
from  the  life  that  we  have  been  studying  we 
call  it  spiritual  life.  And  the  object  of  this 
little  book  is  to  make  clear  the  truth  that 
spiritual  life,  no  less  than  physical,  fulfils  itself 
by  growth,  by  perpetual  motion,  by  an  un- 
ceasing putting  off  of  the  old  and  putting  on  of 
the  new.  The  order  in  nature  is  wonderful, 
but  its  wonder  is  multiplied  beyond  measure- 
ment when  we  contemplate  the  fact  that  the 
upward  progress  of  its  life  has  resulted  in  Man, 
a  being  in  whom  a  new  and  higher  kind  of 
growth  exhibits  itself;  and  he  in  turn  groaneth 
and  travaileth  in  pain  in  the  upward  pressure 
and  striving  after  self-fulfilment  of  the  life 
within  him.  And  that  not  only  in  men  as 
separate   individuals,   but  in  man  as  a  family. 


ENERGY  7 

a  tribe,  a  state,  a  nation,  and  finally  in  the 
human  race,  one  unthinkably  complex  spiritual 
organism  striving  after  an  ever  more  abundant 
life. 

It  is  worth  a  great  deal  to  try  to  broaden  our 
mmds  by  a  wide  outlook,  to  make  a  practice 
of  letting  our  thoughts  and  sympathies  expand 
in  the  attempt  to  get  a  little  nearer  to  a  mental 
grasp  of  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  in  a 
moment  of  time.  Such  a  grasp  may  not  be 
essential  in  the  sense  that  without  it  we  cannot 
be  good  Christians ;  but  it  is  certainly  true 
that  without  it  we  cannot  be  understanding; 
Christians.  And,  it  may  be  added,  without  it 
our  intercessions  for  the  world  cannot  be  what 
they  might  be. 

Dwell  for  a  moment  on  the  word  "energy." 
It  means  *'  the  power  of  doing  work."  We 
can  think  of  it  in  two  ways — before  the  work 
has  begun,  and  while  it  is  in  process.  If  you 
compress  a  spring,  it  has  ''potential"  energy; 
the  power  is  stored  up  ready,  and  the  spring 
will  leap  up  the  moment  it  is  given  the  chance. 
And  when  that  happens,  the  potential  energy 
becomes    ''kinetic,"     moving,    actual.       Gun- 


8  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

powder  or  petrol  has  stored  within  it  the 
power  of  doing  work,  which  is  released,  or 
rendered  active,  when  a  spark  is  applied.  A 
seed  is  potentially  a  full-grown  plant,  because 
it  has  the  power  of  growing  into  one  if  the 
conditions  are  favourable.  An  infant  is  poten- 
tially a  man  for  the  same  reason  ;  he  possesses 
the  stored-up  power  of  growth.  Shut  your 
eyes  and  try  to  think  of  the  potential  energy 
stored  up  in  the  whole  of  nature,  and  inces- 
santly becoming  kinetic.  It  is  not  one  energy 
in  one  thing,  and  another  energy  in  another. 
It  is  all  one  and  the  ^ same  energy,  one  stored- 
up  power,  pressing,  straining,  always  trying  to 
burst  forth  in  movement,  activity,  growth. 
The  entire  universe  is  alive  with  one  life.  It 
cannot  be  measured ;  it  is  never  diminished, 
it  can  never  be  increased.  It  is  the  life  of  God 
at  work  in  matter. 

Now  carry  this  thought  into  the  spiritual 
life.  In  the  physical  sphere  the  growth  of  a 
rosebud  and  the  growth  of  a  baby  proceed 
on  exactly  similar  lines  and  by  similar  methods  ; 
but  the  baby  belongs  not  to  one  world  but  to 
two.     Matter  is  inferior  to  spirit  and  dependent 


ENERGY  9 

upon  It  for  its  existence  ;  but  It  Is  the  same 
God  who  worketh  all  In  all.  In  the  spiritual 
sphere  life  is  the  same  divine  life  as  In  the 
physical,  the  same  potential  energy,  the  same 
stored-up  power  ;  but  It  works  upon  different 
**  material "  (as  in  the  poverty  of  our  language 
we  are  obliged  to  call  it),  and  fulfils  Itself 
not  in  physical  movement  and  growth,  but  in 
spiritual ;  Its  product  is  not  increase  of  body, 
but  increase  of  personality.  And  as  each 
separate  organism  in  the  physical  world  Is  a 
point  at  which  the  working  of  the  divine  energy 
reveals  itself  physically,  so  each  individual 
human  soul  is  a  point  at  which  it  reveals  itself 
spiritually.  It  is  Impossible  to  press  too  strongly 
the  vast  truth  that  all  life,  whether  it  works 
physically  or  spiritually,  is  one.  As  we  try 
to  grasp  the  unity  of  material  nature,  so  we 
must  try  to  grasp  the  unity  of  spirit.  We 
need  not  climb  to  a  hillside  to  feel  it ;  we  can 
feel  it,  if  we  will,  on  our  knees  when  we  have 
entered  into  our  closet,  and  shut  the  door,  and 
settled  down  to  prayer.  Get  your  thoughts 
away  from  yourself  and  your  friends,  and  work 
and   surroundings,   and   let   them    range   over 


lo  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

the  continents.  In  all  the  millions  of  the 
human  race  the  potential  energy  of  the  life 
of  God  is  striving,  pressing,  straining  after 
self-fulfilment  by  spiritual  growth.  If  you  can 
feel  and  realize  It  as  a  whole,  you  will  gain  a 
conception  of  what  God  is  that  nothing  else 
can  give  you.  It  will  lead  you  a  little  nearer 
to  an  understanding  of  the  mysterious  truth 
that  while  God  Is  Infinitely  complete  and  perfect 
in  Himself,  He  Is,  in  a  real  sense,  incomplete 
In  nature  and  In  man.  The  energy  of  His 
life  cannot  be  increased  or  diminished,  but 
since  In  the  universe  It  is  potential,  His  very 
nature  demands  a  gradual  and  progressive 
self-fulfilment. 

St  Paul  grasped  this  great  truth,  and  probably 
taught  it  explicitly  in  Epheslans  i.  23.  In  our 
English  versions  the  words  are  translated,  *'of 
Him  that  filleth  all  In  all."  But  the  Greek 
words  more  probably  mean  ^'of  Him  who,  all 
In  all,  is  being  fiUfilledy  It  is  often  said  that 
while  we  need  God,  He  has  no  need  of  us. 
And  that  is,  of  course,  true  of  His  Being  and 
Nature  in  itself;  God  the  Father  Is  eternally 
satisfied,  eternally  complete,  in  His  relationship 


ENERGY  II 

with   the  Son  througli   the  Holy   Spirit.     But 
since  He  has  willed  to  be  the  indwelling  energy 
of  His  creation,  He  needs  the  co-operation  of 
every  atom   of  it;   and  most  of  all   He  needs 
the  co-operation  of  its  highest  product,   Man. 
This  co-ordination  of  the  world  of  nature  and 
the  world  of  spirit,  because  of  the  one  life  at 
work  in   both,   is   expressed   in  a  single  verse 
in  St  John  i.  4  ;  (i)  ''  In  Him  was  life."     This 
follows  the  words— ''All  things  were  made  by 
Him,  and  without  Him  was  not  anything  made 
that  was  made,"  shewing  that  the  evangelist 
was  thinking  of  the  life  as  working  in  nature. 
But  (2),  ''  And  the  life  was  the  light  of  men  "  ; 
the  same  life,   but  producing  in  men,  and  men 
alone,  spiritual  results  which  he  compares  with 
light.       Look    also    at    St    Paul's    expression, 
according  to  the  best  reading,  in  Ephesians  v.  9, 
''the  fruit  of  the  light."     He  might  have  said, 
^'the  fruit  of  the  life,"  or,  as  in  the  Authorized 
Version,    *'the  fruit  of  the    Spirit";   they   all 
mean   the  same   thing.       Read    Psalm    cxlviii. 
with  this  co-ordination  in  mind  ;  verses  i-io  are 
an  expansion  of'  in  Him  was  life,"  and  verses 
1 1 -1 3  of  "the  Hfe  was  the  light  of  men."     The 


12  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

Benedicite  is  formed  on  the  same  lines  ;  and  so 
also  is  the  Te  Deum  when  rightly  understood. 
The  first  part,  down  to  the  words  *'  the  majesty 
of  Thy  glory,"  is  an  expression  of  the  adoring 
praise  of  heaven  and  earth,  and  of  all  things 
visible  and  invisible,  for  the  majestic  life  of 
God  in  creation,  which  produces  the  glorious 
results  of  growth.  Then  in  the  second  part 
w^e  turn  to  Man,  represented  by  the  Christian 
Church.  Apostles,  prophets,  martyrs,  the  holy 
Church  throughout  all  the  world,  acknowledge 
something  more  than  nature  can  acknowledge, 
because  *'  the  light  of  men  "  has  taught  them 
the  glory  of  the  eternal  Trinity  and  the  atoning 
life  and  death  of  Christ. 

The  extent  to  which  St  Paul  is  steeped  in 
the  thought  of  God's  life  as  energy  in  the 
spiritual  world  can  be  seen  by  collecting  the 
passages  in  which  the  divine  energy  is  men- 
tioned. He  knew,  for  instance,  that  all  his 
own  work — the  incomparable  v/ork  of  the 
greatest  of  missionaries — was  due,  not  to  his 
own  power  or  holiness,  but  to  the  potential 
energy  of  God  striving  a,fter  actuality  within 
him :    '^  The  gift  of  the   grace  of  God  which 


ExNERGY  13 

was  given  to  me  according  to  the  energy  of 
His  power"  (Eph.  iii.  7).  "I  labour,  striving 
according  to  His  energy  which  energizes  in 
me  in  power"  (Col.  i.  29).  "  He  who  energized 
in  Peter  .  .  .  energized  also  in  me "  (Gal. 
ii.  2).  And  the  same  was  true  of  the  spiritual 
life  of  his  readers,  and  of  us  among  them  : 
"  God,  who  also  energizes  in  you  who  believe  " 
(i  Thess.  ii.  13).  ''It  is  God  who  energizes 
in  you,  both  to  will  and  to  energize  for  His 
pleasure"  (Phil.  ii.  13).  *'  Unto  Him  who  hath 
power  to  do  exceeding  abundantly  above  all 
that  we  ask  or  think,  according  to  the  power 
which  energizes  in  us  .  .  ."  (Eph.  iii.  20). 
But  it  is  not  only  in  individuals,  but  in  the 
Church  as  a  whole,  that  this  energy  is  always 
straining  after  self- fulfilment :  "  There  are  (in 
the  Church)  diversities  of  effects  of  energy ; 
but  it  is  the  same  God  who  energizes,  all  in 
all"  (i  Cor.  xii.  6).  ''All  these  energizes  the 
one  and  the  same  Spirit"  (ver.  11).  Perhaps 
the  most  instructive  passage  is  Ephesians  iv. 
16:  '^Christ,  through  whom  the  whole  body, 
fitly  framed  together  and  compacted  by  every 
joint  in  its  supply,  according  to  the  energy  in 


14  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

the  measure  of  each  single  part,  maketh  the 
growth  of  the  body  for  the  building  up  of  itself 
in  love."  Here  is  a  vivid  picture  of  the  growth 
which  is  the  aim  and  purpose  of  God's  life  in 
the  Church  as  a  single  well-constructed  body. 
In  the  corresponding  passage  in  Colosslans  ii. 
19  the  apostle  says  (literally),  "  the  whole  Body 
.  .  .  groweth  the  growth  of  God,"  the  meaning 
of  which  would  have  been  the  same  if  he  had 
said  ''llveth  the  life  of  God." 

We  shall  never  gain  a  true  idea  of  the 
spiritual  life  till  we  have  grasped  this  funda- 
mental truth.  My  growth  is  God's  life  strain- 
ing after  self- fulfilment,  physically  in  my  body, 
spiritually  in  my  soul.  It  will  give  a  richer 
meaning  to  many  other  passages  in  St  Paul's 
epistles  :  "Jesus  Christ  is  In  you  "  (2  Cor.  xiil. 
5).  "  It  Is  no  longer  I  that  live,  but  Christ 
llveth  in  me"  (Gal.  ii.  20).  ''That  Christ  may 
dwell  in  your  hearts  through  faith"  (Eph.  ill. 
17).  "Christ  In  you,  the  hope  of  glory"  (Col. 
i.  27),  i.e.,  a  potentiality  which  gives  hope  of 
fulfilment.  Similarly,  "  His  Spirit  that  dwelleth 
in  you  "  (Rom.  vlii.  11).  "  Know  ye  not  that  ye 
are  God's  temple,  and  the  Spirit  of  God  dwelleth 


ENERGY  15 


in 


you?"  (i  Cor.  iii.  16).     ''  Know  ye  not  that 
your  body  is  the  temple  of  the  Holy  Spirit  which 
is  in  you?"   (vi.    19).     ''The  Holy  Spirit  that 
dwelleth  in  us  "  (2  Tim.  i.  14).     The  indwelling 
Christ,  the  indwelling  Spirit,  does  not  simply 
live  within   me  as   in  a  ready-made  building. 
The  indwelling  is  analogous  to  the  indwelling 
of  the  divine  life  in  a  seed  or  a  bud  ;  it  is  for 
the  purpose  of  growth.     St  Paul's  boldest  ex- 
pression of  this  truth  is  seen   in  his  metaphor 
in   Galatians   iv.    19:     "My  little  children,    of 
whom    I  am  again   in  travail  until    Christ    be 
formed    in    you."       Christ    wants   to   grow    to 
m.aturity  in  us  ;    i.e.,   His  infinitely  mature  and 
perfect  life  for  which,  in  itself,  growth  has  no 
meaning,    strains    after    self-fulfilment    in    my 
growth  and  in  the  growth  of  all   men.     The 
Christ  fully  formed  in  all  mankind  is,  as  Tenny- 
son puts  it,  "the  Christ  that  is  to  be." 


3.  WILL 

Up  to  this  point  the  analogy  from  nature  has 
held  good;  but  now  it  begins  to  fail  us.  In 
physical  nature  growth  proceeds  in  perfect 
accord  with  the  will  of  God,  with  the  unvary- 
ing order  which  is  the  expression  of  His  mind. 
Hence  physical  growth  may  be  described  as 
"automatic."  The  word  is  actually  used  in  St 
Mark  iv.  28:  ''The  earth  bringeth  forth  fruit 
automatically "  (E.V.,  of  itself).  The  cells 
which  compose  the  bodies  of  plants,  animals, 
and  men  cannot  help  obeying  the  "laws"  of 
nature,  as  we  call  them,  the  unvarying  order 
of  the  life  of  God.  But  while  we  think  of  this 
with  awe  and  wonder,  we  are  met  by  a  mystery 
far  more  marvellous  in  the  fact  that  spiritual 
growth  is  not  automatic.  Human  spirits  can 
and  do  disobey.  And  every  transgression  and 
disobedience  receives  a  just  recompense  of 
reward    in   the  hindering,   thwarting,   stunting 

of   the    souFs   growth.     In    the  whole    human 

16 


WILL  17 

race  the  life  of  God  is  pressing  and  straining 
after  self-fulfilment,  but  in  every  member  of  it 
the  human  will  can  get  in  the  way  and  hinder. 
It  can  grieve  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God  by  pre- 
venting Him  from  exercising  His  energy.  I 
think  that  this  way  of  regarding  the  spiritual 
life  shews  more  clearly  than  any  other  that  sin 
is  something  positive.  It  is  not  mere  absence 
of  virtue,  mere  failure.  It  is  the  deliberate  act 
of  the  will  crushing  down,  so  to  speak,  and 
keeping  under  the  potential  energy  of  God, 
instead  of  allowing  it  to  fulfil  itself  by  growth. 
St  Stephen's  words,  "  Ye  do  always  resist  the 
Holy  Spirit,"  describe  the  universal  tendency 
of  the  race  of  men  ever  since  the  first  man 
resisted  for  the  first  time.  This  is  a  great 
mystery.  That  God's  life,  complete  in  itself, 
should  be  potential  in  nature  and  in  man,  and 
require  self-fulfilment,  is  wonderful  enough. 
But  that  man  should  be  possessed  of  a  power 
of  will  which  can  thwart  that  fulfilment  sur- 
passes the  bounds  of  the  human  imagination. 
''How  unsearchable  are  His  judgments  and 
untraceable  His  ways  !  " 

And  yet,  at  the  same  time,  the  possibility  of 


i8  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

the  case  being  otherwise  surpasses  equally  the 
bounds  of  the  human  imagination.  For  God 
is  Love,  and  the  self- fulfilment  of  His  life  in 
man  is  reached  by  man's  growth  in  love. 
And  love  that  is  not  voluntary  is  not  love. 
Man's  will  must  be  free  enoug^h  to  choose 
between  right  and  wrong — to  choose,  that  is, 
between  furthering  and  hindering  the  energy 
of  God.  If  he  could  not  choose,  he  would  be 
an  automatic  machine  ;  and  that  would  please 
God  only  to  the  extent  that  a  turnip  or  a  pig 
can  please  Him.  In  other  words,  divine  love 
requires  in  man  the  capability  of  sinning. 

But  this  is  not  a  mere  unmeaning  paradox  if 
we  realize  that  God  is  the  sufferer  from  man's 
sin.  God's  love  is  such  that  He  longs  for 
man's  answering,  voluntary  love  ;  and  it  is  so 
great  that  He  is  willing  to  sacrifice  Himself — to 
give  His  own  self- fulfilment  in  man  into  the 
power  of  man  to  further  or  hinder  as  he  chooses, 
in  order  that  man's  love  may  be  voluntary. 
This  has  been  stated  often  before ;  but  it  needs 
constant  repetition,  so  long  as  there  are  those 
who  think,  for  example,  that  the  horrors  of  the 
war   are    incompatible    with   God's   love.     He 


WILL  19 

loves  men  enough  to  undergo,  in  them,  all  the 
horrors  of  the  war,  because  He  will  not  dis- 
honour a  single  human  being  in  all  the  nations 
of  the  earth  by  turning  him  into  an  automatic 
machine  through  the  forcing  of  his  will.  He 
has  given  Himself  a  law  which  shall  not  be 
broken.  The  order  of  His  own  Being  in  His 
indwelling  in  man  is  unvarying  and  inviolable, 
because  He  is  love.  To  rebel  against  the  fact 
that  He  will  not  force  a  single  German  to  do 
what  is  right  is  to  rebel  against  His  sacrifice  of 
Himself,  His  own  self-yielding  to  the  will  of 
men.  To  measure  the  contradiction  of  sinners 
against  Himself,  is  to  learn  something  of  the 
measure  of  His  love. 

Why  He  should  have  made  the  laws  of 
thought  to  be  what  they  are,  why  love  is  of 
such  a  nature  that  when  it  ceases  to  be  volun- 
tary it  ceases  to  be  love,  is  the  ultimate  mystery. 
It  is  here  that  St  Paul's  words  find  their  truest 
application  :  ''  O  man,  who  art  thou  that  repliest 
against  God  ?  "  The  laws  of  thought,  the  laws 
of  nature,  the  laws  of  the  spiritual  life,  are  what 
they  are  because  God  is  what  He  is. 

The  automatic  growth,  then,  in  nature  affords 


20  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

no  analogy  to  the  voluntary  growth  In  the 
spiritual  life  of  men.  But  the  comparison  fails 
also  in  another  respect.  Every  organism  in 
nature,  including  the  human  body,  grows  to  its 
prime,  and  then  decays  and  dies. 

"  So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems , 
So  careless  of  the  single  lifer 

And  in  the  long  run  even  types  are  subject 
to  the  same  natural  law.  When  Tennyson 
spoke  of  the  ** single  life"  he  meant  the  single 
physical  instruments  of  the  one  life.  But  with 
human  souls,  the  single  spiritual  instruments  of 
the  one  life,  the  case  is  very  different.  Their 
possession  of  will  gives  them  a  permanent 
distinctness,  an  eternal  value,  wholly  indepen- 
dent of  the  body.  They  possess  the  capability 
of  unending  growth.  No  soul,  except  by  its 
own  deliberate  act,  is  subject  to  decay  and 
death.  It  is,  indeed,  possible  for  a  man  to  *'  lose 
his  own  soul,"  but  he  does  not  lose  it  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  nature.  ''It  is  not  the  will 
of  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  that  one  of 
these  little  ones  should  perish."  It  has  often 
been  pointed  out,  and  rightly,  that  one  of  the 


WILL  21 

principal  features  in  our  Lord's  teaching,  and 
in  the  Christian  reHgion  ever  since,  is  the  value 
that  it  sets  upon  the  individual.  In  dealing 
with  souls  God  is  never  "careless  of  the  single 
life."  **  There  is  joy  in  heaven  over  one  sinner 
that  repenteth."  No  Christian  can  ever  say  in 
despair,  "  What  is  my  soul  in  the  boundless 
creation  ?  "  Though  all  souls  share  in  the  one 
life,  though  one  and  the  same  divine  energy 
works,  strives  for  self- fulfilment,  in  them  all, 
yet  each  is  distinct,  because  each  is  given  the 
power  of  furthering  or  hindering  that  fulfilment 
voluntarily.  It  is  not  difficult  to  admit  the 
distinctness  of  St  Paul's  soul,  for  example.  But 
then,  you  say,  St  Paul  was  unique  ;  there  has 
never  been  anyone  quite  like  him  in  the  world's 
history.  And  I  answer,  you  are  unique.  There 
has  never  been  anyone  quite  like  you  in  the 
world's  history.  The  endless  fertility  of  God's 
creative  energy  is  bringing  into  existence 
human  beings  at  I  don't  know  how  many 
hundreds  a  day,  and  no  two  are  exactly  alike. 
If  you  were  exactly  like  anyone  else,  God  might 
be  able  to  do  without  you  ;  but  because  you  are 
unique  He  cannot.      In  writing  up  the  list  of 


22  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

His  people  He  would  miss  you ;  your  contribution 
to  the  fulfilment  of  the  one  life  is  a  contribution 
which  no  one  else  can  make.  ''If  I  were  rich,  if 
I  were  clever,  if  I  were  strong  and  healthy,  if  I 
had  gifts  and  opportunities  that  other  people 
have,  if  I  were  exactly  like  some  one  else,  and 
not  what  I  am,  then  I  could  do  something  for 
God."  All  feelings  of  this  kind  would  vanish 
if  we  could  only  remember  that  God  has  no  use 
for  duplicates,  and  therefore  He  doesn't  make 
them. 

It  is  worth  while  to  digress  for  a  moment  to 
remind  ourselves  what  our  work  for  God  in- 
cludes. Every  soul  is  a  deep  and  hidden 
mystery.  And  the  influence  of  souls  upon  souls 
is  a  mystery  utterly  beyond  our  power  to  fathom. 
A  wireless  message  travels  equally  in  every 
direction,  and  can  be  received  wherever  there 
is  an  instrument  fitted  to  receive  it.  And  since 
the  souls  of  men  are  closely  bound  together  in 
the  vast  spiritual  unity  of  the  one  life,  in  which 
there  are  no  bodily  or  physical  limits,  no  space, 
and  no  time,  the  influence  of  one  soul  can  have 
its  effect  upon  the  whole.  You  simply  don't 
know,  you  cannot  measure,  you  cannot  guess, 


WILL  23 

what  your  soul  is  doing  to  other  souls  for  bad 
or  for  good.  St  Paul,  in  speaking  of  the  Church, 
says,  '*  If  one  member  suffer,  all  the  members 
suffer  with  it "  ;  and  if  so,  the  converse  must 
be  equally  true — if  one  member  be  lifted  nearer 
to  God,  all  the  members  are  lifted  with  it.  It 
opens  up  before  us  vistas  of  unspeakable  mar- 
vel and  mystery.  We  possess  for  a  short  time 
physical  instruments  that  we  call  bodies  ;  but 
we  are  souls.  And  every  soul  is  a  centre  from 
which  influence  radiates  with  no  limits  of  space 
or  time.  Prayer  for  others  is  part  of  our  tre- 
mendous work.  But  sheer  love  to  God  and 
men  can  do  a  work  beyond  our  knowledge  or 
imagination.  Isn't  it  a  thought  that  will  make 
us  pray  with  new  earnestness,  "  Stir  up,  we 
beseech  Thee,  O  Lord,  the  wills  of  Thy  faithful 
people  "  ?  Stir  them  up  to  fresh  longings,  fresh 
strivings,  fresh  penitence,  fresh  love.  It  is  a 
motive  which  makes  life  worth  living  for 
anyone. 

One  more  fundamental  truth  before  we  pass 
to  the  thought  of  our  own  spiritual  growth. 
If  we  could  say  no  more  about  God  than  that 
His  life  is  universal  energy  working  for  growth, 


24  THE    INCREASE    OF   GOD 

we  should  not  advance  beyond  what  is  called 
Pantheism.  It  is  one  aspect  of  the  Being  of 
God,  and  an  aspect  of  which  modern  religious 
thought  in  the  West  has  tended  rather  to  lose 
sight.  Some  Christians  are  apt  to  leave  it  to 
poets  and  other  idealists,  and  to  dismiss  it  as 
somewhat  unpractical  and  wanting  in  reality. 
But  provided  we  remember  that  it  is  one  aspect 
only,  and  not  the  whole,  its  importance  cannot 
be  over-rated.  Anyone  who  is  trying  to  make 
use  of  these  pages  with  a  serious  purpose  should 
ask  himself  whether  he  has  to  any  extent  been 
missing  a  great '  inspiration,  in  living  his 
Christian  life  without  a  full  recognition  of 
God's  immanence  in  nature  and  in  man. 

But  the  other,  equally  important,  aspect  has 
already  emerged  in  our  study.  Energy  alone 
cannot  be  thougljt  of  as  will.  But  when  we 
know  that  man  possesses  will  which  can 
voluntarily  co-operate  or  refuse  to  co-operate 
with  God,  we  are  led  to  the  conclusion  that 
that  which  has  endowed  man  with  will  cannot 
itself  be  devoid  of  will.  The  divine  will  and 
the  human  will  stand  —  inconceivably  but 
certainly  —  over    against    each    other.       The 


WILL  25 

technical  term  transcendence,  as  opposed  to  the 
Immanence  of  God,  expresses  the  truth  of  the 
separateness,  the  distinctness,  between  God  and 
man, — a  distinctness  which  makes  us,  Hke  Faust, 
feel  ourselves  ''  so  small,  so  great."  In  physical 
nature  there  is  no  such  personal  separateness ;  no 
mineral,  vegetable,  or  animal  lower  than  man,  is 
a  person.  But  by  endowing  man  with  person- 
ality, God  reveals  His  own  personality.  And  this 
supplies  us  with  something  which  the  other 
aspect  of  God's  Being,  taken  by  itself,  cannot 
give,  i.e.,  an  understanding  of  the  ptcrpose  of 
God.    We  are  to  grow ;  but  grow  towards  what? 


4.  THE  GOAL 

We  are  to  *' grow  up  unto  Him  in  all  things." 
All  mankind,  as  one  whole,  is  to  come,  in  the 
unity  of  the  faith  and  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
Son  of  God  unto  a  perfect  (a  mature,  developed, 
fully  grown)  man,  unto  the  measure  of  the 
stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ.  If  we  ask 
what  this  means  the  answer  is  threefold. 

I .  Selflessness.  —  The  identification  of  our 
wills  with  His.  ''Our  wills  are  ours  to  make 
them  Thine."  Every  human  soul  is  in  a  posi- 
tion to  say,  *'  Lo,  I  am  come  [into  existence]  to 
do  Thy  will."  Not  to  annihilate  my  will ;  that 
would  be  annihilation  of  my  personality.  That 
is  not  Christianity,  but  Buddhism.  When  a 
plant  or  animal  dies,  the  Individuality  of  its  life, 
so  far  as  we  know,  is  absorbed  into  the  universal 
life,  and  its  place  is  taken  by  other  physical 
instruments  by  which  that  life  can  express 
itself.     But  the  spirit,  the  personality  of  man, 

is  not  intended  for  death,  nor  to  be  "  remerged 

26 


THE    GOAL  27 

into  the  general  soul."  It  is  intended  for 
growth  towards  the  perfect  harmony  of  his  will 
with  God's.  "This  is  the  will  of  God,  even 
your  sanctification."  And  since  we  never 
reach  it  in  this  world,  we  conclude  that  in  the 
other  world  the  growth  will  continue.  But  if 
we  could  imagine  the  condition  of  a  human 
soul  which  had  reached,  in  respect  of  selfless 
obedience,  the  perfection  of  growth,  it  would 
not  be  right  to  suppose  that  it  had  ceased  to 
be  a  human,  individual  soul.  It  is  a  soul  in 
which  God  for  ever  takes  infinite  delight, 
because  the  harmony  of  the  human  will  and 
the  divine  is  for  ever  complete.  We  can  form 
no  conception  of  the  joy  in  heaven  over  one 
sinner  made  perfect,  and  no  conception  of  the 
bliss  of  the  human  soul  in  whom  God  is 
eternally  well  pleased.  But  it  is  an  aim  and  a 
goal  which  gives  to  our  daily  spiritual  growth 
all  its  meaning  and  inspiration.  Epaphras 
could  not  have  prayed  a  better  prayer  for  his 
converts  at  Colossae  than  that  they  might 
''stand  perfect  and  fulfilled  in  all  the  will  of 
God  "(Col.  iv.  12). 

2.  Knowlcdoe. — ''  This    is    life    eternal    that 


28  THE    INCREASE    OF   GOD 

they  should  know  Thee  the  only  true  God,  and 
Jesus  Christ  whom  Thou  hast  sent."     This  Is 
not  separate  from  the  harmony  of  our  will  with 
His;   it  is  closely  bound  up  with  It.     On  the 
one    hand,    St    Paul    prays    for    those    same 
Colossians  that  they  might  "  be  filled  with  the 
knowledge    of    His    will    in    all    wisdom    and 
spiritual  understanding."     A  knowledge  of  God 
must  precede  obedience  ;  we  must  know  what 
He  wants  before  we  can  want  the  same.     But 
on  the   other  hand,  the    more   fully  we    know 
Him  and  harmonize  with    His  will,  the  more 
like  Him  we  become,  and  therefore  the  more 
able    we   are    to    know    with    spiritual    under- 
standing what  He  likes  and  dislikes.     Selfless 
obedience    grows    from    knowledge,    but    also 
produces  It.     St    Paul    expresses    this   growth 
in  knowledge  very  beautifully  when  he  prays 
for  the  Phllippians  (I.  9),   "that  your  love  may 
abound  yet  more  and  more  in  knowledge  and 
in  all  judgment."     The  last  word  in  the  Greek, 
cBsthesis,   suggests    something   In    the   spiritual 
life  which  may  be  compared  with  that  wonder- 
ful sixth  sense  which  many  blind  persons  seem 
to  possess.     We  ordinary  Christians,  who  have 


THE   GOAL  29 

not  advanced  very  far  in  our  growth,  have 
very  little  idea  at  present  what  it  can  be  :  a 
spiritual  instinct,  a  delicate  sensitiveness  of  per- 
ception, an  intuitive  certainty,  "  understanding 
what  the  will  of  the  Lord  is  "  (Eph.  v.  17). 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  different  this  is  from  a 
knowledge  about  God.  I  might  read  a  whole 
library  of  books  about  Napoleon,  but  I  could 
not  know  him  because  he  died  years  before  I 
was  born.  Anyone  who  lived  with  him  day 
and  night  for  a  few  years,  or  even  days,  knew 
him  in  a  way  that  is  impossible  for  all  the 
subsequent  historians  who  have  studied  his 
life.  Theology  is  not  a  knowledge  of  God, 
but  only  a  knowledge  of  facts  or  theories  about 
Him.  Or  to  put  it  differently,  it  is  a  know- 
ledge with  the  intellect  alone,  and  not  with  the 
whole  being.  At  the  same  time  the  intellect 
cannot  be  left  out  of  account ;  and  we  cannot 
do  without  theology.  A  perfect  knowledge  of 
God  must  be  a  knowledge  in  which  every 
element  in  our  being  takes  part.  We  must 
obviously  have  some  intellectual  scaffolding  for 
our  spiritual  building.  But  the  sad  thing  is 
that   some    theologians    and    Biblical    students 


30  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

spend  their  whole  life  and  energy  on  the 
scaffolding ;  they  mistake  it  for  the  building, 
and  are  content ! 

3.  Love. — What  is  love  ?  No  one  knows 
but  the  lover.  Others  might  know  if  he  could 
describe  it  in  words ;  but  that  is  impossible. 
As  well  might  the  sufferer  try  to  answer  the 
question — What  is  pain  ?  The  physiologist 
can  tell  us  only  the  bodily  conditions  of  which 
pain  is  the  accompaniment.  Let  us  see  if  we 
can  trace  some  of  the  spiritual  conditions  of 
which  love  is  the  accompaniment.  But  before 
we  do  that,  we  must  again  realize  the  poverty 
of  language.  In  the  Greek  of  the  New 
Testament  there  are  two  words  which  we 
translate  "  to  love."  The  difference  in  meaning 
must  not  be  over-pressed,  but  still  they  may 
be  taken  as  expressing  love  from  two  points  of 
view.  Broadly  speaking,  the  one  involves  a 
getting,  and  the  other  a  giving.  In  the  one 
the  lover  gets  a  feeling  of  pleasure,  delight, 
satisfaction  of  some  sort,  from  the  loved  ;  he 
loves  because  of  some  attractiveness  which  calls 
forth  his  love.  In  the  other  the  lover  wants 
the  loved  to  get  something,  and  so  he  gives 


THE   GOAL  31 

himself  freely.  Needless  to  say,  the  former 
word,  though  it  is  employed  to  express  the 
Father's  love  for  the  Son  (St  John  v.  20),  is 
never  used  to  express  His  love  for  us.  Apart 
from  what  He  gives  us  there  is  nothing 
attractive  in  us  to  call  forth  His  love.  His 
love  is  always  a  free  self-giving.  **  God  so 
loved  the  world  that  He  gave  His  only- 
begotten  Son,"  that  is  Himself,  because  the 
only-begotten  Son  is  God.  Nevertheless, 
having  given  Himself  to  us,  He  longs  to 
receive  back  from  us  all  that  is  divine  and 
beautiful,  all  that  we  have  received  from  Him. 

Our  love,  on  the  other  hand,  must  be  of  both 
kinds.  Since  He  is  altogether  lovely,  the 
human  soul  must  always  want  to  get  Him. 
'*  My  soul  is  athirst  for  God  "  is  the  first  aspect 
of  love.  But  it  must  not  be  only  a  desire  to 
get.  The  soul,  in  fact,  finds  that  impossible. 
The  more  it  gets,  the  more  it  is  consumed  with 
the  passion  of  self-giving,  that  is,  of  giving  back 
to  God  what  it  has  received.  How  wonderful 
this  is  can  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  it  is 
intended  to  be  a  reproduction  of  the  mutual  love 
of  the  eternal  Father  and  the  eternal  Son  in  the 


32  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

eternal  Spirit  of  love.      It  is  to  be  wholly  and 
completely     mutual,     wholly    and     completely 
divine.     Of  ourselves  we  have  nothing  to  give  ; 
but  since  we  get  Him,  we  have  everything  to 
give.     There  is  a  real   sense  in  which  He  is 
incomplete  without  it.      He  is  "  being  fulfilled  " 
according  as    He  receives   from  us  the  divine 
love  which  He  gives  us.     Our  getting  and  our 
giving    are    each    inconceivable    alone.      Our 
growth  and  God's  self-fulfilment  consist  in  our 
progress  in  the  give  and  take  of  love,  that  finally 
God  may  be  all  in  all.     And,  as  was  said  above 
in  regard  to  harmony  with  God's  will,  this  is 
not  the  annihilation  of  our  individuality.     We 
shall  for  ever  "  '  feel  God  and  ourselves,'  as  the 
lover  feels  his  beloved,  in  a  perfect  union  which 
depends  for  its  joy  on  an  invincible  otherness."  ^ 
Now  we  can  understand  better  the  spiritual 
conditions  of  which  love  is  the  accompaniment. 
To  get  God   is  to  get  a  knowledge  of  Him. 
To   give  ourselves   is  to    bring  our   will    into 
harmony  with  His.     As  we  know  Him  better 
we  obey   Him  better;   and  as  we  obey  Him 

1  E.  Underhill's  introduction  to  Ruysbrock's  *'  The  Adorn- 
ment of  the  Spiritual  Marriage,"  p.  xxxi. 


THE   GOAL  33 

better  we  grow  in  likeness  to  Him  and  there- 
fore know  Him  better.  It  is  wholly  mutual, 
and  wholly  divine,  and  wholly  love.  Obedience, 
knowledge,  and  love  are  a  trinity  in  unity  ;  and 
nothing  less  than  that  is  the  Christian  life  ;  it  is 
the  ideal  towards  which  we  are  created  to  grow. 
'*  Many  more  words  I  should  like  to  say  here, 
but  those  who  possess  this  have  no  need  of 
them  ;  and  he  to  whom  it  has  been  shown,  and 
who  cleaves  with  love  to  love,  he  shall  be  taught 
the  whole  truth  by  love  itself."  ^ 

1  Ruysbrock,  "  The  Book  of  Supreme  Truth,"  p.  248  in 
the  same  volume. 


5.  THE  GLORY  OF  MAN 

Let  us  sum  up  our  thoughts  so  far.  God's  life 
is  as  potential  energy  in  nature  and  in  man, 
striving  towards  self- fulfilment.  But  in  His 
dealings  with  men  we  learn  that  God  is  personal, 
since  He  has  endowed  them  with  personality, 
with  will,  with  the  capacity  of  voluntarily  co- 
operating or  refusing  to  co-operate  with  God. 
And  if  man  co-operates  it  is  by  obedience, 
knowledge,  and  love,  each  impossible  without 
the  other  two,  and  all  together  tending  to  growth. 
But  the  ideal  is  so  vast  that  it  would  be  utterly 
unattainable  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  it  has 
already  been  attained.  It  has  been  attained  in 
manhood  in  the  Person  of  Jesus  Christ.  That 
is  why  St  Paul  speaks  of  "  Christ  in  you,  the 
hope  of  glory."  The  great  writer,  Origen,  said 
many  true  things,  but  he  made  a  mistake  when 
he  declared  that  He  who  was  Man  on  earth  is 
now  no  longer  Man  but  God.  Christ  is  eter- 
nally God  and  Man ;    His  earthly  life  was  an 

34 


THE   GLORY   OF   MAN  35 

exhibition  in  time  and  space  of  His  divine 
humanity.  It  was  an  exhibition  of  perfect 
human  growth.  And  it  Is  the  eternal  Manhood 
of  the  Son  of  God  which  on  earth  co-operated 
with  God  by  obedience,  knowledge,  and  love, 
that  is  by  His  Spirit  the  potential  energy  in 
mankind. 

And  thereby  manhood  is  glorified.  *'  The 
glory  that  Thou  hast  given  Me,  I  have  given 
them " — potentially.  But  it  is  in  process  of 
becoming  actual  **  if  we  suffer  with  Him  "  (in 
the  sacrifice  of  ourselves  through  obedience, 
knowledge,  and  love),  *'  that  we  may  be  also 
glorified  with  Him."  That  will  be  ''the  liberty 
of  the  glory  of  the  sons  of  God,"  *'the  eternal 
weight  of  glory,"  which  we  gradually  approach 
by  being  "  changed  into  the  same  image  (pro- 
gressively) from  glory  unto  glory."  St  Paul 
recognized  this  glory  in  man  so  profoundly  that 
in  speaking  of  two  Christians  who  had  gone  on 
some  mission  to  the  Corinthians,  "  our  brethren 
the  emissaries  of  the  Churches,"  he  could  state 
quite  simply,  with  no  explanation,  that  '*  they  are 
the  glory  of  Christ"  (2  Cor.  viii.  23).  It  is  a 
marvellous   description  of  the  aim  set  before 


36     .         THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

every  Christian.  We  are  to  make  actual  the 
potential  glory  of  the  indwelling  Christ.  Let  us 
turn  to  our  own  lives  and  see  how  we  stand. 

I.  What  opportunities  does  God  give  us  of 
growth  in  selfless  obedience.'^  Every  one  knows 
that  they  are  too  numerous  to  describe.  Every 
kind  of  trouble,  sorrow,  need,  sickness,  or  any 
other  adversity,  every  secret  temptation,  every 
opportunity  of  any  sort  of  self-discipline,  is 
something  to  be  grasped  at  and  rejoiced  in  as 
a  fresh  chance  of  bringing  our  will  into  harmony 
with  His,  of  making  the  great  words,  ''  Thy  will 
be  done,"  a  living  reality.  But  most  of  us  feel 
that  while  we  are  to  some  extent  prepared  to 
meet  and  accept  difficulties  that  come,  so  to 
speak,  straight  from  God,  we  find  it  a  thousand 
times  harder  to  make  a  real  opportunity  of  those 
which  come  through  men.  To  give  real  and 
ready  obedience  to  those  to  whom  it  is  due, 
to  be  clothed  with  humility  towards  others,  to 
accept  advice,  rebuke,  criticism,  or  hints  from 
others,  to  put  others  first,  to  let  others  speak 
while  we  remain  silent,  to  rejoice — really  rejoice 
— in  the  promotion,  or  success,  or  happiness  of 
others,  to  be  humble,  helpful,  selfless  towards 


THE   GLORY   OF   MAN  37 

the  men  and  women  among  whom  we  Hve,  and 
whose  faults  and  failings  we  know  so  well,  '*  in 
honour  preferring  one  another  " — is  there  any- 
thing in  life  that  is  for  some  of  us  more  truly 
crucifixion  than  this  ?  It  becomes  possible  only 
as  we  grow  in  the  realization  that  in  men  and 
women  the  energy  of  God's  life  is  at  work,  that 
they  are,  potentially,  "the  glory  of  Christ,"  that 
it  is  not  they  that  live,  but  Christ  liveth  in  them, 
and  therefore  that  it  is  to  Him  in  thein  that  we 
are  to  be  humble,  helpful,  and  selfless.  ''  Inas- 
much as  ye  did  it  to  one  of  the  least  of  these 
My  brethren — the  least  important,  the  least 
attractive,  the  least  advanced  in  spiritual  growth 
— ye  did  it  unto  Me."  And  all  the  passages 
quoted  in  Chapter  2  from  St  Paul  involve  the 
same  truth.  The  Psalmist  could  ask,  '*  What  is 
man  that  Thou  art  mindful  of  him  } "  but  he 
answered  his  own  question  by  saying,  *'  Thou 
madest  him  but  little  short  of  divine,  and  didst 
crown  him  with  glory  and  honour"  (Ps.  viii.  4,  5). 
Nothing  will  help  us  towards  growth  in  self- 
lessness so  surely  as  to  recognize  and  rever- 
ence this  glory  and  honour  in  every  man, 
woman,   and    child.     Moreover,  we    may,  and 


38  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

must,  recognize  and  reverence  it  in  ourselves. 
The  great  principle  noblesse  oblige,  which  is  ap- 
plicable to  Christians  above  all  other  men,  is 
finely  expressed  by  a  Jewish  writer  :  "  My  son, 
glorify  thy  soul  in  meekness,  and  give  it  honour 
according  to  the  dignity  thereof"  (Ecclus.  x.  28). 
Our  proud  heart  cries,  I  cannot  humble  myself ; 
it  would  be  agony  I  I  cannot  obey  ;  it  would 
be  torture  !  But  *'  who  ever  found  the  Cross  a 
pleasant  bed  ?  "  To  be  crucified  with  Christ, 
who  pleased  not  Himself,  to  let  His  mind  be  in 
you  which  was  also  in  Him,  to  manifest  forth 
His  glory,  His  meekness,  and  gentleness,  and 
lowliness  of  heart,  gives  to  one's  own  soul  the 
reverence  that  is  its  due.  It  is  not  by  standing 
on  your  dignity,  but  by  self-emptying,  that  you 
exalt  yourself  and  all  other  men  and  women 
whom  the  King  delighteth  to  honour  by  his 
indwelling. 

2.  But,  as  we  saw  before,  selfless  obedience 
requires  knowledge.  What  opportunities  does 
God  give  us  of  getting  to  know  Him  ?  We  can 
learn  much  from  the  effects  of  His  energy 
in  nature ;  but  we  can  learn  far  more  by 
studying   the   process    of    His   spiritual    self- 


THE   GLORY   OF   MAN  39 

fulfilment  in  men.  If  one  and  the  same  energy 
is  at  work  in  all  men,  and  in  you,  a  vivid 
realization  of  it  will  give  you  a  growing  know- 
ledge of  it  through  a  growing  sympathy.  We 
can  apply  to  our  knowledge  of  God  dwelling 
in  men  the  words  of  St  Paul  that  were  quoted 
above :  "  This  I  pray,  that  your  love  may 
abound  yet  more  and  more  in  knowledge  and 
in  all  delicate  perception."  Christ  "  knew  what 
was  in  man,"  not  by  some  superhuman  magic, 
impossible  for  anyone  else,  but  by  the  inten- 
sity of  His  sympathy,  the  sensitiveness  of  His 
spiritual  touch.  His  Divinity  could  come  out 
to  meet  that  which  is  divine  in  all  men  ;  deep 
answered  to  deep  with  the  perfect  understanding 
of  the  God-Man  for  men  made  in  the  image 
of  God.  We  cannot  make  the  least  approach 
to  such  knowledge  without  practice  and  self- 
sacrifice.  It  will  come  with  growth  in  selfless- 
ness. Some  people  find  it  very  difficult  to  put 
real  meaning  into  St  Peter's  injunction,  "Honour 
all  men."  But  the  way  to  do  it  is  to  hold  fast, 
in  spite  of  all  appearances  to  the  contrary,  to 
the  conviction  that  God's  life  is  in  them,  to 
treat  them  accordingly,  to  try  hard  to  discover 


40  THE   INCREASE   OF  GOD 

it,  and  to  pray  hard  and  work  hard  for  them 
that  it  may  grow.  And  this  is  not  the  duty 
only  of  clergymen  and  religious  workers, 
though  they  sometimes  need  the  reminder  as 
much  as  anyone.  How  many  well  -  to  -  do 
mistresses,  who  go  to  church  regularly,  are  apt 
to  forget  that  their  servants  possess  the  in- 
dwelling energy  of  God's  life,  the  glory  of  Christ, 
as  truly  as  they  do  ?  How  many  business  men 
"honour"  their  clerks,  and  assistants,  and 
labourers  by  the  same  recognition.-^  How 
many  school  teachers  have  the  spiritual  cesthesis 
to  see  God's  life  striving  for  growth  in  their 
pupils  ?  Maxima  reverentia  debetur  puerisy 
*'  the  utmost  reverence  is  due  to  children," 
because  of  the  limitless  possibilities  of  His 
self-fulfilment  in  them.  To  recognize  the 
divine  in  every  one  is  a  primary  duty  of  the 
Christian  life  ;  and  it  will  not  need  much  self- 
examination  to  shew  most  of  us  how  little  we  have 
grown  towards  this  knowledge  of  what  is  in  man. 
3.  But  once  more,  it  is  our  love  that  is  to 
abound  yet  more  and  more  in  knowledge,  and 
in  all  delicate  perception.  "We  needs  must 
love  the  highest  when  we  see  it "  in  anybody. 


THE   GLORY   OF   MAN  41 

When  we  have  discovered  the  divine,  however 
inchoate  and  undeveloped,  in  the  most  degraded 
man  or  woman,  we  cannot  help  loving  it.  And 
conversely,  love  is  the  only  thing  that  will  find 
it — love  for  what  we  know  is  there  because 
we  believe  that  God  became  incarnate  in 
humanity.  We  sometimes  speak  of  a  man  or 
woman  as  being  ''large-hearted"  enough  to 
love  unlovable  people.  We  should  all  be 
large-hearted  enough  if  we  were  not  so  blind. 
What  is  needed  is  faith  to  believe  that  God's 
life  is  in  them,  and  selflessness.  All  obtrusion 
of  self — all  sin,  in  fact — obscures  our  vision  and 
blots  out  from  our  sight  what  we  want  to  see. 
It  is  the  pure  in  heart  that  see  God  in  the  men 
and  women  around  them.  From  the  ordinary 
earthly,  social,  human  point  of  view  they  may 
be  anything  but  lovable.  But  God  is  lov- 
able, and  God  is  there.  If  there  Is  one  com- 
mand that  often  seems  more  meaningless 
than  ''  Honour  all  men,"  it  is  "Thou  shalt  love 
thy  neighbour  as  thyself";  but  it  is  lit  with 
a  flood  of  light  when  we  see  that  it  means 
**  Love  God  in  thy  neighbour  as  thou  lovest 
Him  in  thyself." 


6.  TWILIGHT 

Having  reached  this  point  in  our  meditations 
on  "  what  God  is  and  man  is "  we  are  in  a 
better  position  to  look  at  some  of  the  various 
aspects  of  our  growth. 

St  Paul  speaks  of  it  as  growth  from  child- 
hood, or  rather  infancy,  to  manhood.  He  tells 
the  Corinthians  that  when  he  preached  to  them 
he  was  obliged  to  confine  himself  to  the  simplest 
teaching,  because  they  were  not  grown  up 
enough  for  proper  food;  they  were  as  ''babes 
in  Christ "  who  needed  milk.  And  he  blames 
them  for  not  having  even  yet  advanced  beyond 
this  (i  Cor.  iii.  1-3).  And  in  Hebrews  v. 
11-14  the  unknown  author  speaks  in  the  same 
way.  In  i  Corinthians  xiii.  11  St  Paul  writes 
as  having  made  the  advance  that  his  readers 
had  failed  to  make  :  "  When  I  was  a  child  (Iz^. 
a  babe),  I  spake  as  a  child,  I  understood  as 
a  child,  I  thought  as  a  child ;  but  when  I 
became  a  man    I    put  away   childish    things." 


TWILIGHT  43 

(Perhaps  he  was  only  referring,  by  way  of 
illustration,  to  physical  and  mental  growth,  but 
the  words  can  be  applied  also  to  the  spiritual 
life.)  In  Galatians  iv.  3  he  looks  back  to  a 
time  when  he  and  his  readers  alike  were  in 
the  same  immature,  elementary  condition : 
*'We,  when  we  were  children,  were  enslaved 
under  the  elements  (i.e.,  the  elementary  ideas) 
of  the  world."  And  in  Ephesians  iv.  13,  14 
he  speaks  of  all  Christians  growing  up  towards 
'*the  perfect  (/.^.,  the  mature,  fully-grown  and 
fully-instructed)  man,  towards  the  measure  of 
the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ ;  that  we 
be  no  longer  children  .  .  .  but  may  grow  up 
unto  Him  in  all  things." 

If  these  passages  are  studied  with  their 
context  it  will  be  seen  that  each  of  them  deals 
with  a  different  element  in  Christian  growth. 
Let  us  look  particularly  at  Galatians  iv.  3.  It 
is  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
the  thoughts  suggested  by  it.  ''  When  we 
were  children"  means  "before  we  were 
Christians."  The  Galatian  converts  were 
mostly  Gentiles,  but  the  apostle  couples  them 
with  himself,  because  they  were   in  imminent 


44  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

danger  of  lapsing  into  the  Judaism  in  which  he 
had  formerly  lived;  so  that,  for  him,  ''when 
we  were  children"  virtually  meant  "when  we 
were  Jews,"  before  we  had  grown  out  of  the 
elementary  notions  of  God  and  goodness  beyond 
which  the  Hebrew  race  as  a  whole  had  not 
advanced. 

Now,  apart  from  the  natural  tendency  of  the 
human  heart  to  surrender  in  paralytic  weakness 
to  every  onslaught  of  the  world,  the  flesh,  and 
the  devil,  I  believe  that  the  greatest  hindrance 
to  the  advance  of  real  Christianity  in  our  land 
is  the  fact  that  many  thousands  of  Christians 
have  not  the  least  idea  how  elementary,  how 
Jewish,  some  of  their  notions  are.  Dwell  for 
a  moment  on  the  words  in  St  John  i.  9  :  ''The 
true  light  which  lighteth  every  man  was 
[already  in  existence]  coming  into  the  world." 
Carry  your  mind  away  to  some  spot  in  the 
country  at  the  darkest  hour  of  a  dark  night. 
If  you  wait,  there  will  come  a  time,  long  before 
sunrise,  when  the  world  is  not  quite  as  dark 
as  it  was.  There  are  no  colours,  no  shadows, 
no  details,  but  still  there  are  dim  shapes  just 
becoming  visible  ;    and  it  is  the  light  of  the 


TWILIGHT  45 

unrisen  sun  that   makes    them  so.     And  long 
ages   before  Christ    came    on    Christmas   day, 
men's  hearts  were    not   quite  dark  ;  they  had 
some  dim,  faint  ideas  of   right  and  wrong,— 
very  dim  and  faint,  but  what  they  had  came 
from  Christ,  the  Hght  that  lighteth  every  man, 
because  every  man  was  made  in  the  image  of 
God.     But  as  we  wait  longer  among  the  hills, 
and   trees,    and  hedges,    the   outlines   become 
gradually  sharper  and  clearer;  shapes  slowly 
grow  into  things  ;  and  more  and  more  things 
emerge  from  the  darkness,  details  appear,  and 
begin  to  mean  something  definite.     It  is  again 
a  picture  of  human  history.     Men's  ideas  were 
growing  more  distinct,  and  they  gradually  felt 
their  way  to  some  early  forms  of  religion.     Still 
no  colours,  or  shadows,  or  beauty,  but  neverthe- 
less the  dawn  was  nearer  than  before.     And  so 
the  solemn  progress  of  the  early  morning  goes 
on,  till  we  realize  that  it  has  become,  compara- 
tively speaking,  quite  light;  the  grass  begins 
to  be  green,  the  hills   blue,  the  sheep  white, 
though   the   sunrise    is    still    to   come.      This 
progress  can  be  seen  in  the  history  of  all  nations, 
but   especially    in    that   of    Israel.      At    first 


46  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

primitive,  wandering  Arabs,  they  came  to  learn, 
we  know  not  how,  something  of  God.  They 
were  still  fierce  and  untutored ;  they  still 
thought  it  right  to  hate  and  torture  their 
enemies  ;  they  still  thought  that  religion  con- 
sisted in  sacrificing  animals,  while  the  condition 
of  their  own  hearts  was  a  matter  which  it  did 
not  occur  to  them  to  trouble  about  ;  they  still 
thought  that  God  cared  for  no  one  but  them 
because  they  were  His  people,  and  that  He 
hated  all  other  nations  as  His  enemies.  The 
sunrise  was  still  far  away.  And  yet  the  world 
was  growing  brighter ;  a  great  step  forward 
was  made  when  the  prophets  appeared.  God's 
revelation  was  given  to  them  more  fully  than 
to  anyone  before.  They  taught  that  He 
wanted  holiness  and  obedience  and  purity  and 
kindness  and  truth,  more  than  all  whole  burnt- 
offerings  and  sacrifices.  And  they  taught  also 
that  Israel  was  His  chosen  people — not  because 
He  loved  them  alone,  but  because  He  was  the 
God  of  all  men,  and  wanted  Israel  to  be  His 
instrument  to  bring  them  all  to  love  and 
worship  Him.  The  world  was  growing 
wonderfully  bright ;  and  it  was  the  same  light 


TWILIGHT  47 

that  lighteth  every  man.  But  the  brightness 
and  the  glory  and  the  radiant  colours  of  sky 
and  landscape  still  go  on  increasing  in  their 
beauty.  Israel  learnt  more  about  God  ;  and  in 
particular  they  came  to  perceive  that  the  sun- 
rise was  near  at  hand  ;  the  expectation  of  a 
Messiah,  of  a  perfected  divine  sovereignty  on 
earth,  had  become  an  intense,  passionate, 
immediate  longing.  And  so  at  length  we 
are  brought  to  the  little  band  of  holy  souls 
who  looked  for  redemption  in  Jerusalem — the 
names  that  we  know  so  well— Simeon,  Anna, 
Zachariah,  Elizabeth,  Joseph,  and  the  virgin 
of  the  house  of  David,  whose  name  was  Mary. 
They  were  privileged  to  see  the  first  flashing 
ray  of  unutterable  glory  straight  from  the  very 
face  of  the  Sun.  God  said,  let  there  be  lio'ht ; 
and  there  was  light.  The  light  that  lighteth 
every  man  all  through  the  ages  had  been 
gradually  coming  nearer  and  nearer  unto  the 
perfect  day. 

This  simile  of  the  dawn  helps  us  to  see  that 
the  Christianity  of  the  New  Testament  ought 
to  be  clearly  perceived  before  we  can  place  in 
its    true   perspective    the   gradual   and    partial 


48  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

advance  towards  it  in  the  Old.  The  Old 
Testament  is  the  record  of  an  inspired  growth 
in  the  understanding  of  God's  nature  ;  it  is  a 
roadway  leading  in  the  direction  of  Christ.  But 
Christians  must  use  it  only  in  the  light  of  that 
to  which  it  points.  God  does  not  intend  us  to 
take  its  ideas  about  Him,  and  about  goodness, 
and  simply  adopt  them  for  ourselves  *' because 
they  are  in  the  Bible."  The  Old  Testament  is 
a  living  and  moving  picture  of  the  gradual 
brightening  of  the  sky  before  sunrise.  The 
light  was  that  of  the  same  Sun  of  righteousness 
that  appeared  upon  the  earth  at  Christmas ; 
but  that  is  no  reason  for  contenting  ourselves 
with  twilight,  as  countless  Christians  are  still 
doing. 

In  order  to  contrast  twilight  and  sunrise, 
childhood  and  manhood,  it  will  be  useful  to  look 
at  some  of  the  Jewish  ideas  about  God.  It 
was  pointed  out  at  the  end  of  Chapter  3  that  we 
are  compelled  to  think  about  God  under  two 
seemingly  opposite  and  contradictory  aspects. 
He  is  immanent  in  nature  and  in  man,  in  that 
His  life  is  as  potential  energy  straining  after 
self-fulfilment.     But   the   fact  that  man  is  en- 


TWILIGHT  49 

dowed  with  will  which  can  oppose  and  hinder 
this  fulfilment  constitutes  a  separateness  be- 
tween God  and  man  ;  He  possesses  personality; 
He  is  from  this  point  of  view  other  than  man. 
Greek  Pantheism  was  mistaken  because  it  re- 
presented only  the  former  half  of  the  truth  ; 
Hebrew  Theism  was  mistaken  because  it  con- 
fined itself  almost  entirely  to  the  latter  half. 
A  long  period  of  tribal  life  under  the  govern- 
ment of  chiefs,  and  then  a  few  centuries  under 
the  rule  of  kings,  mosdy  of  the  usual  oriental, 
despotic  type,  had  given  to  the  people  of  Israel 
the  idea  that  God  was  a  great  Chief  or  King. 
Their  earthly  king  ruled  them,  he  led  them  in 
batde  against  their  enemies,  and  judged  them  ; 
and  m  return  they  had  to  render  him  obedience 
and  give  him  tribute.  If  they  failed  to  give 
him  his  due,  he  maintained  his  rights  by  in- 
flicting punishment.  And  in  their  atdtude 
towards  God  this  system  was  reproduced.  He 
was  their  Sovereign,  their  Leader,  their  Master, 
their  Judge,  who  would  take  care  of  them  and 
bless  and  help  and  prosper  them  on  condition 
that  they  paid  Him  His  dues.  So  long  as  they 
did  that,  they  were  correct,  blameless,  and  safe, 
4 


so  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

to  describe  which  they  used  the  term  that  we 
(very  inadequately)  translate  "righteous."  If  a 
man  failed  in  any  particular,  he  was  **  un- 
righteous ";  his  failure  was  a  *'  debt,"  something 
which  he  ought  to  have  rendered  and  had  not 
rendered.  God,  of  course,  could  never  be 
otherwise  than  "righteous,"  i.e.,  in  the  right. 
He  and  man  were  as  Plaintiff  and  defendant  in 
a  law-suit,  but  also  as  Judge  and  criminal. 
When  He  punished  He  was  vindicating  His 
rights  and  recovering  His  debts.  But  when 
a  man  had  been  sufficiently  punished,  or  had 
paid  an  equivalent  in  the  form  of  a  sacrifice, 
matters  were  put  right  once  more,  and  he  was 
now  "  righteous  "  until  he  failed  again.  Or  God, 
of  His  free  kindness,  might,  if  He  liked,  simply 
remit  the  debt,  i.e.,  restore  the  sinner  to  the 
position  of  "  righteousness''  without  due  punish- 
ment. 

This  is  what  is  meant  by  the  legalism,  or  the 
forensic  nature,  of  the  Jewish  religion.  And 
anyone  whose  religion  is  of  that  sort  is  bound 
to  ask  himself  five  questions : — i.  What  must  I 
do  to  be  correct,  blameless,  safe,  "  righteous  "  1 
In  other  words — What  is  the  exact  amount  of 


/ 

TWILIGHT  SI 

my  debt,  my  due,  to  God  ?  What  is  the  mini- 
mum that  is  necessary  for  the  retention  of  His 
favour?  2.  If  I  render  Him  His  due,  what  is 
the  reward  that  is  due  from  Him  to  me  in 
return?  3.  If  I  fail,  what  is  the  punishment 
that  is  due  from  Him  to  me  in  return  ?  4.  If  I 
fail,  what  is  the  equivalent  for  punishment  that 
He  will  accept  to  put  matters  right  ?  5.  Under 
what  circumstances  is  He  likely  to  remit  the 
debt  altogether  ? 

We  must  remember  that  in  passing  from 
Judaism  to  Christianity  we  pass  from  twilight 
to  sunrise,  from  childhood  to  manhood  ;  and 
therefore  we  cannot  simply  put  our  pen  through 
these  questions  and  say  that  for  Christians  they 
have  no  meaning.  The  Jewish  system  is  not 
cancelled  outright,  but  transfigured,  lifted  to  a 
higher  plane  by  the  fact  that  God  is  not  only  a 
transcendent  King,  Master,  and  Judge,  but  also 
the  immanent  Life  in  manhood,  self-fulfilled 
perfectly  in  Christ,  and  therefore  potentially  in 
all  mankind  and  in  every  human  being.  A 
study  of  these  five  questions  in  the  light  of  the 
New  Testament  would  help  us  to  realize  what  a 
volume  of  meaning  is  contained  in  St  Paul's 


52  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

words,  "  When  we  were  children  we  were  en- 
slaved under  the  elementary  ideas  of  the  world." 
This,  however,  is  not  the  place  for  the  close 
reasoning  which  such  a  study  would  involve. 
But  the  first  two  questions  alone,  if  treated  in  a 
practical  way,  are  enough  to  make  us  think 
furiously  about  ourselves. 


7.  BEING   GOOD 

There  is  a  world  of  difference  betv/een  being 
child-like  and  being  childish.  Our  Lord  bids  us 
be  the  former  ;  St  Paul,  with  whose  teaching  we 
are  here  concerned,  warns  us  that  we  must 
grow  out  of  the  latter.  You  may  remember 
the  little  girl  in  Punch,  who  was  asked  whether 
she  would  rather  be  good  or  pretty  ;  and  her 
answer  was,  ''  I  would  rather  be  pretty,  because 
I  can  always  be  good  whenever  I  like  to  try." 
Now  why  is  that  a  genuine  picture  ?  It  is 
because  a  small  child  thinks  that  to  be  good 
means  the  same  as  not  to  be  naughty  ;  to  do 
what  she  is  told,  and  to  refrain  from  doing  what 
she  is  told  not  to.  For  a  small  child  that  is 
quite  right.  And  St  Paul  says  that  the  Israelite 
nation  was  just  like  that.  Their  spiritual  life 
was  confined  to  obeying  a  series  of  commands — 
"Thou  shalt,"  and  ''Thou  shalt  not."  And 
thousands  of  Christians  have  progressed  no 
further.     Here  is  a  pleasant,  well-meaning  sort 

53 


54  THE   INCREASE   OF  GOD 

of  man,  who  has  never  done  anything  very 
wicked,  and  who  goes  to  church  with  some 
degree  of  regularity  on  Sundays.  And  he  asks, 
*'  What  more  can  be  expected  of  me  ?  Oh,  no 
doubt  I  occasionally  lose  my  temper  ;  sometimes 
I  can't  help  laughing  at  an  unclean  joke  when 
I  am  with  other  men  (you  don't  want  me  to 
set  up  for  being  a  saint,  do  you  ?) ;  and  of  course, 
if  the  chance  comes  my  way,  I  am  bound  to  do 
a  stroke  of  business  that  I  shouldn't  perhaps 
explain  to  my  daughters,  for  instance  ;  but  then 
business  is  business,  a  thing  which  women — 
and  parsons — never  can  understand.  But  I  don't 
break  any  of  the  Ten  Commandments,  and 
I  don't  drink,  and  I  should  like  to  meet  the 
man  who  could  say  anything  against  my  moral 
life."  The  man's  soul  simply  hasn't  grown  up. 
To  say  that  we  have  never  done  wrong  to  God, 
even  if  it  were  true,  would  not  be  enough. 

Here  is  another  man,  a  very  typical  Briton. 
He  could  sum  up  in  a  sentence  his  idea  of 
Christianity  ;  it  means  '*  to  be  good  and  to  get 
to  heaven."  And  precisely  the  same  sentence 
would  sum  up  the  religious  ideas  of  any  number 
of  Jews  and  Mohammedans  !     Their  notions  of 


BEING  GOOD  55 

heaven  may  differ  a  little, — though  I  don't  think 
they  differ  very  much  ;  they  all  expect  an  eternity 
of  luxury,  happiness,  and  peace  in  a  glorious 
place  above  the  skies,  and  they  all  expect  to  be 
allowed  in  if  they  are  good  enough.  The  aver- 
age British  Christian  thinks  it  scarcely  within 
the  bounds  of  possibility  that  he  can  actually  be 
*'shut  out";  it  is  too  horrible  to  be  possible. 
He  has  led  a  pretty  good  life  on  the  whole,  and 
that  must  count  for  something.  God  is  so  kind 
that  He  simply  cant  shut  him  out ;  he  assumes 
in  a  nebulous  sort  of  way  that  he  will  pass  in 
the  crowd,  and  get  through  the  door  of  heaven 
with  the  best  of  them.  It  is  the  well-worn 
doctrine  of  good  works.  If  you  ask  him  further 
w^hat  he  means  by  good  works,  and  if  he 
answers  in  what  he  feels  to  be  the  proper 
religious  language,  he  will  say  that  it  means 
keeping  God's  commandments.  But  that  is 
Jewish,  pure  and  simple  !  If  he  explained  him- 
self it  would  probably  be  somewhat  as  follows  : 
*'  I  must  be  truthful  and  moral ;  I  must  not  steal, 
or  cheat,  or  swear,  or  drink  ;  I  must  do  my  duty 
to  God  by  attending  public  worship  ;  above  all, 
I  must  do  my  duty  to  my  neighbour  by  being 


56  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

kind — kind  in  word,  kind  in  manner,  kind  in 
giving  money,  kind  in  supporting  social  work, 
and  religious  work,  and  especially  war  charities." 
So  long  as  a  man  is  kind,  some  people  seem  to 
think  that  nothing  else  matters. 

A  woman  might  express  herself  rather  differ- 
ently. It  IS  not  difficult  to  draw  a  character 
sketch  of  the  ''  worker  "  who  depends  upon  her 
good  works.  She  too  is  kind,  at  any  rate  to 
a  good  many  people.  It  Is  true  she  is  not 
always  quite  kind  in  the  way  she  speaks  about 
other  women.  But  they  are  so  impossible,  so 
vulgar,  so  silly,  so  something  or  other,  that  she 
cannot  help  speaking  the  truth  about  them. 
(If  it  is  the  truth  it  Is  worse  than  unnecessary, 
ninety-nine  times  out  of  a  hundred,  to  speak  It. 
But  some  women's  idea  of  '*  being  good  "  simply 
does  not  include  attention  to  the  warning, 
''  Judge  not  that  ye  be  not  judged.")  But  beside 
being  kind,  she  Is  ''very  particular"  about  her 
own  habits  and  manner  of  life,  and  also  about 
those  of  her  children,  her  servants,  and  anyone 
else  under  her  control.  A  little  hard  and 
managing,  perhaps  ;  but  then  the  world  would 
never  get  on  if  there  were  not  some  people  In 


BEING   GOOD  57 

It  with  common  sense.  Moreover,  she  Is  Chari- 
table and  energetic  ;  she  is  on  any  number  of 
committees,  and  is  the  Hfe  and  soul  of  all  of 
them.  She  naturally  likes  power,  and  wants 
things  done  in  her  own  ways,  because  they  are 
always  the  best  ways.  Finally,  she  goes  to 
church,  of  course,  every  Sunday,  and  sometimes 
also  on  a  week  day ;  and  she  is  a  regular 
communicant.  Considering  all  this,  she  cannot 
help  feeling  herself  to  be — and  she  know^s  that 
other  people  think  her — *'a  thoroughly  good 
woman." 

Now  what  does  the  New  Testament  suggest 
as  to  the  attitude  of  mind  of  these  three 
persons,  who  are  specimens  of  a  large  number 
of  Christians  ?  St  Paul  would  call  it  childish. 
The  Idea  of  ''  being  good  "  Is  a  relic  of  Judaism. 
The  apostle  spends  a  great  part  of  his  fervid 
energy  In  fighting  against  the  Jewish  concep- 
tion of  works.  It  Is  quite  right  and  suitable  for 
children,  who  are  In  an  elementary  condition  ; 
but  Christians  ought  to  be  mature  men  who 
have  put  away  childish  things.  The  rich 
young  man  was  a  typical  Jew,  a  typical  child, 
naif  2.xidi  attractive  in  his  simplicity  :  "  All  these 


58  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

things  have  I  kept  from  my  youth  up  "  ;  I  have 
always  *'been  good."  The  prodigal's  elder 
brother,  on  the  other  hand,  is  pictured  as  the 
reverse  of  attractive  :  **  Lo,  these  many  years  do 
I  serve  thee,  neither  transgressed  I  at  any  time 
thy  commandment."  And  the  Pharisee  in  the 
temple,  thinking  of  the  publican  as  the  elder 
brother  thought  of  the  prodigal,  and  looking  at 
life  from  the  same  point  of  view,  had  become  a 
sanctimonious  prig,  which  is  the  most  revolting 
sort  of  child  that  it  is  possible  to  meet. 

But  St  Paul's  picture  of  the  Jews  as 
children  contains  the  further  thought  of  slavery, 
i.e.,  forced  obedience  :  *'So  long  as  the  heir  is 
a  child  he  differs  in  no  way  from  a  slave " 
(Gal.  Iv.  i).  It  Is  the  slavish  attitude  that  is 
condemned  in  a  parable  of  our  Lord  (St  Luke 
xvii.  7-10),  which,  I  think,  is  often  mis- 
understood. **  Doth  he  thank  the  slave  for 
doing  what  was  commanded  him  ?  So  also  ye, 
when  ye  have  done  all  that  was  commanded 
you,  say  we  are  unprofitable  slaves  ;  what  we 
were  bound  to  do  we  have  done  !  "  Some  people 
think  that  it  sounds  very  hard  and  hopeless  ; 
but  that  Is  because  they  have  not  caught  the 


BEING   GOOD  59 

true  emphasis  of  the  parable.  Our  Lord  does 
not  mean  that  however  much  we  try  to  do  for 
God  we  can  never  please  Him  ;  His  point  lies 
in  the  word  ''slave."  A  slave  does  only  what 
he  is  bound  to  do  ;  as  a  slave  he  is  as  nearly 
as  possible  an  automaton.  God  receives  from 
nature  all  the  automatic  service  that  He  needs. 
From  man  He  wants  something  higher,  some- 
thing free,  voluntary,  spontaneous  ;  not  a 
static  but  a  growing  obedience,  knowledge, 
and  love.  It  is  ''  the  freedom  wherewith  Christ 
has  made  us  free."  And  if  we  have  once 
begun  to  know  what  freedom  means,  we  must 
not  "be  again  entangled  in  the  -yoke  of 
bondage"  (Gal.  v.  i). 

Oh,  what  can  be  done  to  make  people  see 
that  as  long  as  they  imagine  that  God  merely 
wants  them  to  "be  good,"  their  religion  is 
static,  Jewish,  childish,  slave-like?  Anyone 
who  raises  his  voice  against  it  is,  like  Jeremiah, 
up  against  the  dead  weight,  the  ponderous  vis 
inertice,  of  the  inherited  ideas  of  the  race. 
Although  we  have  been  largely  freed  from  the 
notion  of  a  mechanical,  verbal  inspiration  of 
Scripture,  yet  we  are  not  yet  loosed  from  one 


6o  THE    INCREASE    OF   GOD 

of  its  products, — the  assumption  that  since  we 
believe  in  the  same  God  as  the  God  of  the 
Hebrews,  all  that  pleased  Him  in  their  religion 
must  necessarily  please  Him  in  ours.  We  find 
it  hard  to  bring  ourselves  to  realize  that  He 
was  suitably  treating  them  as  children,  but  that 
He  wants  Christians  to  behave  as  adults.  We 
need  a  prophet,  we  need  an  army  of  prophets, 
to  go  through  the  land  and  proclaim  that 
''  none  is  good  but  One,  that  Is  God,"  and  that 
therefore  //e  does  not  expect  us  to  be  good. 
What  He  does  expect  is  that  we  should  always 
be  growing  better,  which  is  a  very  different  thing. 
Look  at  a  small  child,  say  at  ten  years  of  age, 
learning  to  play  the  piano,  and  the  same  child 
at  the  piano  four  or  five  years  later.  Compare 
him  with  one  of  the  world-famed  masters  of 
the  art,  and  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  speak  of 
him  as  a  good  pianist ;  but  if  he  has  been 
steadily  improving,  it  is  not  the  intrinsic  merits 
of  his  present  performance,  but  simply  the  fact 
of  growth,  and  the  future  possibilities  to  which 
that  points,  that  make  him  the  pride  and 
delight  of  his  teacher.  Most  people  would 
agree  that  St  Paul  was    ''a   thoroughly  good 


BEING   GOOD  6i 

man "  ;  but  he  knew  perfectly  well  that  that 
did  not  satisfy  God,  and  he  was  therefore 
spurred  on  by  an  endless  dissatisfaction  with 
himself.  Growth  was  the  one  and  only  thing 
that  mattered.  *'  Not  that  I  have  already 
received,  or  have  been  already  perfected,  but 
I  pursue,  if  haply  I  may  grasp,  that  for  which 
also  I  was  grasped  by  Christ  Jesus.  Brethren, 
I  count  not  myself  yet  to  have  grasped  it.  But 
one  thing  I  do — forgetting  the  things  that  are 
behind  (the  successes  as  well  as  the  failures), 
and  straining  forward  to  the  things  that  are  in 
front,  I  pursue  after  the  goal  for  the  prize  of 
the  heavenly  calling  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus. 
As  many  of  us,  therefore,  as  are  mature  (grown 
out  of  our  childhood),  let  us  be  thus  minded  " 
(Phil.  iii.  12-15).  It  is  only  by  our  perpetual 
motion  that  God  in  us  is  being  gradually  self- 
fulfilled. 


8.  NATURAL   GOODNESS 

One  striking  fact  about  "  being  good "  is 
that  to  some  people  it  comes  quite  easily  and 
naturally,  with  little  effort  or  struggle  ;  it  would 
be  distasteful  to  them  to  be  anything  else. 
Look  at  the  effect  produced  by  our  deeply 
engrained  notion  that  that  is  all  that  matters. 
Some  one  speaking  of  a  friend  says,  "He  doesn't 
pretend  to  be  religious,  but  he  is  an  awfully 
good  sort."  I  think  that  many  of  us  might 
be  willing  to  describe  some  of  our  friends  in 
the  same  way.  If  we  expanded  a  little  we 
might  say  ''he  seldom  goes  to  church,  he 
never  goes  to  the  Holy  Communion,  and  so 
far  as  I  know  he  doesn't  say  his  prayers  ;  but 
for  all  that  he  is  straight,  and  clean,  and  the 
kindest-hearted  man  that  ever  stepped ;  and 
much  pleasanter  and  nicer  than  some  people 
that  I  know  who  are  by  way  of  being  religious." 
Now,  if  "being  good"  is  all  that  matters,  the 
question  naturally  arises,  If  a  man  can  be  like 


NATURAL  GOODNESS  63 

this  without  religion,  what  practical  advantage 
is  there  in  being  religious  ?  What,  Indeed,  is 
reliction  if  it  doesn't  mean  being-  straiorht,  and 
clean,  and  kind  ? 

One  obvious  remark  in  passing.  The  man 
who  "  doesn't  pretend  to  be  religious  "  is  quite 
certainly  a  better  man  than  If  he  did.  May 
God  preserve  the  reader  from  ever  pretending 
to  be  religious !  Jesus  Christ  never  lashed 
anyone  so  scathingly  as  He  did  the  hypocrites. 
He  never  described  divine  punishment  in  more 
awful  words  than  when  He  said,  *'  He  shall 
appoint  him  his  portion  with  the  hypocrites." 

But  what  we  want  to  get  at  is  this  :  if  that 
friend  that  we  are  thinking  of  had,  without  any 
pretence,  been  really  and  truly  religious,  what 
would  he  have  gained  ?  The  question  is  a 
pressing  one.  We  constantly  meet  people  who 
are  ''  good  "  without  being  religious  ;  and  they 
ask,  as  the  rich  young  man  asked,  What  lack 
I  yet? 

Picture  a  deep,  narrow  valley  in  the  Alps. 
You  stand  high  up  on  one  side  of  it,  with 
the  sun  behind  you,  and  look  across  at  the 
opposite  slope.     Close  to  the  bottom  the  trees, 


64  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

and  grass,  and  boulders  are  practically  hidden 
in  a  dark,  misty  shadow.  But  above  that  the 
greater  part  of  the  slope  is  distinctly  visible  ; 
you  can  see  the  large  mass  of  it  clearly  with 
all  its  Alpine  colours.  And  yet  it  is  in  the 
shade  ;  It  gets  light,  but  no  sunshine.  But  as 
your  eye  travels  upwards  It  comes  to  a  narrow 
strip  along  the  top,  in  which  the  trees,  and  grass, 
and  masses  of  rock  are  bathed  in  the  sun's 
rays.  And  beyond  them  rise  the  majestic 
solitudes  of  the  snowy  summits,  glistening 
white  as  no  painter  on  earth  can  white  them. 
This  picture  can  illustrate  four  classes  of  men. 
At  the  bottom  of  the  moral  scale  we  place 
those  whom  we  call  bad  men.  We  cannot 
draw  a  sharp  line  where  men  begin  to  be  bad  ; 
the  bottom  slopes  descend  gradually  into  the 
darkness.  But  when  men  are  thoroughly  bad, 
we  generally  know  it.  For  our  present  purpose 
we  can  leave  them  out  of  account.  And  we 
must  leave  out  of  account  also  the  snowy  peaks, 
the  radiant  saints  who  have  grown,  and  are 
daily  growing,  far  ahead  of  us,  whom  we  are 
lucky  to  meet  here  and  there  in  a  lifetime. 
But  the  other  two  classes  are  of  extreme  interest 


NATURAL  GOODNESS  65 

to  us.  First,  there  is  the  great  mass  of  the 
mountain  slope  that  is  not  in  darkness,  and 
yet  is  not  in  sunshine.  Our  friend,  who  with- 
out being  religious  is  straight,  and  clean,  and 
kind,  is  one  of  a  very  large  class.  But  what 
makes  him  straight,  and  clean,  and  kind  ?  What 
is  the  source  of  his  virtues  ?  And  the  answer 
is  God.  We  can  say  it  without  the  least 
hesitation.  Since  God  is  goodness  itself,  any 
sort  or  kind  of  goodness  in  anyone  is  derived 
from  Him.  All  the  various  trees  on  the 
mountain  slope,  the  birches  and  larches,  oaks 
and  pines,  all  the  grassy  pastures  and  the  great 
bare  rocks,  are  visible  across  the  valley  in  their 
several  tones  and  tints  ;  and  all  these  worketh 
that  one  and  the  self-same  sunlight,  distributing 
to  each  its  different  colour  and  beauty.  God 
made  man  in  His  own  image.  God  planted 
in  man  the  potentiality  of  the  divine  nature. 
All  that  is  best  in  your  friend  comes  from  Him. 
And  all  that  is  good  in  you  recognizes  and 
admires  all  that  is  good  in  your  friend  ;  he 
would  not  seem  to  you  an  awfully  good  sort 
unless  there  were  something  in  you  which 
enabled  you  to  appreciate  him.  It  is,  in  fact, 
5 


66  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

God  in  both  of  you.  And  the  same  has  been 
true  in  every  nation  under  heaven  through  all 
the  countless  ages  of  human  history,  before  as 
well  as  after  Christ  was  born  into  the  world. 
Every  good  thought,  or  word,  or  deed  of  any 
human  being  that  has  ever  existed  has  come 
from  God.  **The  life  was  the  light  of  men." 
The  divine  life  in  every  man  is  the  divine  light 
that  gives  to  every  man  any  beauty  that  he 
possesses.  It  is  God  that  makes  men  straight, 
and  clean,  and  kind.  It  is  God  that  has  given 
them  the  heroism  of  self-sacrifice  in  the  trenches, 
and  on  the  ships,  and  in  the  air,  and  the 
heroism  of  patient  endurance  in  the  hospitals 
and  the  prison  camps.  It  is  God  that  makes 
their  mothers,  and  sisters,  and  daughters,  and 
lovers  all  that  they  have  been  since  the  war 
began.  It  is  all  so  good  that  it  can  come  only 
from  the  source  of  all  goodness. 

And  yet  all  this  is  possible,  and  is  found  in 
numberless  cases,  without  religion.  So  that 
the  question  with  which  we  started  at  the  open- 
ing of  this  chapter  seems,  at  first  sight,  harder 
to  answer  than  ever.  If  men  and  women, 
without   being   religious,    can   possess   to    this 


NATURAL   GOODNESS  ^7 

wonderful  extent  a  natural  goodness  which  we 
maintain  comes  from  God  alone,  what  is  the 
advantage  of  being  religious  ?     Look  again  at 
the  mountain  side.     It  is  true  that  the  greater 
part  of  the  slope,  though  it  is  in  the  shade,  Is 
yet  visible  with  its  colours  and  beauties  by  the 
light  that  comes  from  the   sun.     But  there   is 
the  strip  at  the  top  of  the  slope  that  is  bathed 
in  sunshine.     And  will  anyone  dream  of  insist- 
Iko-  that  that  makes  no  difference?     It  has  all 
the  colour  and  beauty  of  the  rest  of  the  slope, 
but  it  has  an  added  beauty  because  it  lies  in 
the  direct  rays  of  the  sun.     It  can  see  the  sun. 
It  can  discover  with  open  vision  the  source  of 
Its  own  beauty.     It  can  look  away  from  ItseK, 
and  respond  to  and  rejoice  in  the  heavenly  light 
and  heat.     When  a  man  says— What  more  can 
be  wanted  than  to  live  a  strong,  practical  life, 
doing  our  best  ?  he  is  really  begging  the  ques- 
tion.    The  whole  point  Is— What  is  our  best  ? 
Does  it  mean  simply  developing  as  well  as  we 
can,  by  our  force  of   will    and    character,   the 
natural  goodness  with  which  we  are  endowed, 
and  which  our  training,  and  circumstances,  and 
environment    perhaps   help    us   without    much 


6S  THE    INCREASE   OF  GOD 

difficulty  to  preserve?  Or  does  our  best  also 
require  religion  ?  And  the  Christian  has  learnt 
that  it  does.  Goodness  in  the  sense  of  virtue, 
morality,  the  goodness  which  consists  in  being 
straight,  and  clean,  and  kind,  is  not  enough  by 
itself  to  satisfy  the  heart  of  God.  Religion  is 
not  being  good  ;  it  is  seeing  God  ;  knowing, 
realizing,  feeling,  rejoicing  in  God  with  a 
continuously  growing  fulness.  If  God  is  per- 
sonal. He  wants  the  response  of  persons  ;  if  He 
is  Love,  He  longs  to  receive  love ;  and  He  is 
not  getting  it  from  the  man  who  is  not  religious, 
however  naturally  good-hearted  he  may  be. 
He  can  get  from  him,  indeed,  a  pleasure  like 
that  which  He  feels  in  any  beautiful  natural 
object — ''and  God  saw  that  it  was  good"  ;  but 
from  man  he  wants  more  than  that. 

Can  it  be  necessary  to  add  that  religion  is  7io^ 
saying  prayers,  or  going  to  church,  or  reading 
the  Bible,  or  attending  meetings,  or  being  con- 
firmed, or  receiving  the  Holy  Communion  ? 
Vast  numbers  of  people  think  it  is  ;  and  when 
they  see  some  men  and  women  doing  these 
things,  and  yet  being  obviously  little  better  for 
them,  it  is  natural  that  they  should  turn  their 


NATURAL   GOODNESS  69 

backs  on  the  whole  thing,  and  say,  None  of  your 
religion  for  me !  To  think  of  these  actions  as 
religion,  as  things  in  themselves  which  count 
for  something  in  the  sight  of  God,  is  to  make 
the  old  Jewish,  childish  mistake  which  Christians 
ought  to  have  left  far  behind  in  their  growth. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  anyone  who  wants  to  do 
the  real  thing,  to  make  God  a  reality  in  his  life, 
to  make  a  personal  response  of  love  to  the 
Father  who  loves  him,  finds,  as  all  the  greatest 
saints  have  found,  that  in  practice  religious  acts 
are  indispensable,  as  methods — necessary,  prac- 
tical methods — by  which  man  can  get  into  touch, 
and  keep  in  touch  with  God. 

The  thought  on  which  we  have  dwelt  in  this 
chapter  is  beautifully  summed  up  in  Psalm 
xxxvi.  9  :  "  With  Thee  is  the  fountain  of  life," 
i.e.y  the  source  of  all  that  is  beautiful  and  good  in 
men,  "  and  in  Thy  light  shall  we  see  light " — not 
only  ^^^  light,  not  only  possess  a  natural  goodness 
which  comes  from  the  Sun  of  Righteousness,  but 
we  shall  see  Him,  we  shall  eagerly  open  our  souls 
to  be  warmed  in  the  rays  of  His  love,  and  we 
shall  give  Him  pleasure  by  our  glad  response. 


9.  CONSCIENCE 

But  still  it  may  be  urged  that  we  have  not 
quite  dealt  with  the  whole  difficulty.  How  is 
it  that  there  are  some  people  who,  without  any 
profession  of  religion,  not  only  are  straight,  and 
clean,  and  kind,  but  exhibit  characters  stronger 
and  more  attractive  than  those  of  some  religious 
people  ?  Well,  we  must  begin  by  admitting 
at  once  that  the  failings  and  sins  of  Christians 
do  more  harm  to  God's  cause  than  all  the 
hostility  of  bad  men  and  the  arguments  of  un- 
believers. A  moment's  consideration,  of  course, 
ought  to  shew  anyone  that  a  bad  Christian  is 
bad  not  because  of  his  Christianity,  but  because 
of  his  lack  of  it.  But  the  fact  remains  that 
what  does  the  real  harm  is  that  he  professes 
religion,  and  then  in  his  daily  life  makes  it 
appear  as  though  religion  doesn't  work.  And 
that  makes  the  observer  blind  to  what  true 
Christianity  is.  And  besides  admitting  that, 
we  can  admit  also  that  some  who  profess  no 


CONSCIENCE  n 

religion    do    exhibit    characters    stronger   and 
more   attractive   than    some    religious    people. 
But  the  man  who  argues  from  that  that  religion 
is  useless  is  not  being  quite  fair  ;    he  is  com- 
paring the  best  men  of  one  kind  and  the  inferior 
men  of  the   other.     Some   amateurs  play  the 
violin  better  than  some  professionals ;    but  no 
sane  person  argues  that  if  you  want  to  play  the 
violin  as  well  as  you  can,  it  is  better  to  be  an 
amateur  than  a  professional.      It  is  quite  obvious 
that  if  we  strike  an  average,  professionals  play 
better  than  amateurs.     And  it  is  quite  obvious 
also  that  the  greatest  professionals  are  beyond  all 
comparison  with  the  best  amateurs.     I  think  that 
the  same  two  things  may  be  said  in  the  matter 
before  us: — (i)   Those  who  make  a   genuine 
profession    of  religion — hypocrites,    of  course, 
we  leave  out  of  account — are,  on  an  average, 
better  men  than  those  who  make  none.     And 
(2)  the  greatest  Christian  saints,  the  greatest 
professionals,  if  we  may  so  call   them,  reach 
heights  of  spirituaHty,  and  holiness,  and  beauty, 
and    self-discipline,  and    humility  undreamt  of 
by  the  most  moral  pagan  that  ever  lived.      I 
think,  therefore,  that  it  may  fairly  be  said  that 


;^  THE   INCREASE  OF  GOD 

non-religious  men  who  live  more  beautiful  lives 
than  genuine  Christians  are  exceptional  and 
not  normal. 

But  there  is  more  than  that.  Have  you 
ever  tried  to  think  out  clearly  what  is  meant  by 
**  conscience  "  ?  Some  people  have  the  haziest 
notions  about  it.  They  will  tell  you  that  it  is 
something  within  us,  the  voice  of  God  within 
the  soul,  a  ''still  small  voice"  they  often  call  it, 
which  lets  us  know  whether  a  thing  is  morally 
right  or  wrong.  It  is  spoken  of  as  an  infallible 
guide  to  conduct ;  conscience  whispers  this, 
and  conscience  whispers  that.  But  difficulties 
begin  when  we  find  that  conscience  leads  one 
man  to  do  something  which  another  feels  to 
be  utterly  wrong.  For  instance,  it  led  some 
men  to  refuse  military  service,  while  it  led 
millions  of  others  to  accept  it  as  a  noble 
duty.  What  is  this  infallible  something  which 
can  guide  two  men  in  diametrically  opposite 
directions  ?  Remember,  of  course,  that  con- 
science is  not  a  monopoly  of  the  religious  man  ; 
the  non-religious  man  has  it  as  certainly  as  the 
genuine  Christian. 

We  can  put  it  in  a  single  word,  and  say  that 


CONSCIENCE  73 

conscience  is  knowledge}  **  Science"  is  one 
kind  of  knowledge,  **  con-science "  is  another 
kind.  It  is  a  knowledge  or  recognition  of  a 
standard  by  which  we  judge  actions.  All  men 
have  a  standard,  some  higher  and  some  lower. 
And  the  great  question  is  what  that  standard 
is  to  be.  It  is  a  mere  figure  of  speech  to  say 
that  anyone  is  without  a  conscience.  Every  one 
has  a  standard  which  he  knows  and  recognizes, 
and  therefore  every  one  has  a  conscience ;  and 
the  man  who  tries  to  live  up  to  his  standard  we 
call  conscientious.  If  his  standard  of  conduct 
is  to  make  himself  at  all  costs  as  comfortable 
as  possible,  or  to  impose  his  kultur  by  force  on 
every  one  he  meets,  and  if  he  does  his  best  to 
adhere  to  that  standard,  he  is  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  word  *'  conscientious."  The  reason 
why  we  don't  generally  use  the  word  in  such 
cases  is  that  our  British  standard  on  the  whole 
is  higher  than  that.  The  standard  of  vast 
numbers  of  men  is  the  standard  which  happens 
to  be  recognized  and  admitted  in  the  particular 
society  or  group  of  people  to  which  they  belong 

1  I  owe  the  working  out  of  this  thought  to  Mr  Lacey's 
useful  little  book,  "  Conscience  of  Sin." 


74  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

— school,  college,  profession,  trade,  regiment. 
An  average  conscience  is  for  most  men  a 
binding  limit  of  quite  extraordinary  strength. 
Now  we  thankfully  recognize  that  the  average 
Briton  sets  before  himself  a  fairly  decent 
standard.  This  is  owing  partly  to  his  posses- 
sion of  '*  natural  goodness,"  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  comes  from  God,  and  still  more  to  the 
general  leavening  influence  of  Christianity, 
which  affects  him  through  heredity,  and  training, 
and  surroundings,  and  atmosphere.  And  helped 
by  these  things  the  man  who,  without  being- 
religious,  is  *'an  awfully  good  sorl,"succeeds  with 
no  great  difficulty  in  living  up  to  the  average 
British  standard,  which  is  to  be  straight,  and 
clean,  and  kind,  and  of  course  patriotic  and  brave. 
But  the  average  is  not  the  top  ;  it  is  kept  up, 
and  raised  higher,  by  every  one  who  rises  above 
it.  The  average  standard  in  the  hearts  of  men, 
or  In  other  words  the  average  conscience,  is 
raised  by  every  one  who  places  before  himself, 
and  knows  and  recognizes,  a  higher  standard. 
But  that  brings  us  again  to  the  religious  man. 
If  he  is  genuine,  and  not  a  hypocrite,  God  has 
begun  to  be  to  some  extent  real  to  him  as  One 


CONSCIENCE  75 

who  is  to  be  obeyed,  known,  and  loved.  It 
may  be  only  to  a  very  small  extent ;  but  what 
there  is,  is  real.  And  it  at  once  gives  him  a 
standard  higher  than  that  of  the  man  who  has 
no  religion,  even  though  the  latter  be  a  much 
nicer  and  pleasanter  person  to  deal  with,  being- 
more  richly  endowed  through  fortunate  circum- 
stances with  the  instincts  of  natural  goodness. 
Since  God  alone  is  ^'good,"  the  religious  man 
can  never  live  up  to  his  standard  ;  he  is  never 
satisfied,  never  contented.  And,  moreover,  the 
more  he  obeys,  and  knows,  and  loves  God,  the 
more  he  learns  that  there  is  to  obey,  and  know, 
and  love;  so  that  he  is  always  striving  to  get 
nearer  to  a  continually  rising  standard.  And 
that  is  only  another  way  of  describing  the 
spiritual  growth,  the  perpetual  motion,  of  which 
we  have  thought  in  previous  chapters. 

Thus  the  religious  man  is  up  against  a  very 
big  thing — the  average  British  standard,  the 
average  British  conscience — which  it  is  his  life's 
duty  to  try  and  raise  a  little  higher.  From  the 
nature  of  the  case  his  immediate  efforts  are 
mosdy  confined  to  the  society  or  group  of 
people  to  which  he  belongs.     And  there  comes 


76  THE   INCREASE  OF  GOD 

the  rub.  He  has  to  rise  above  the  average 
standard  of  those  who  know  him  best.  And 
men  shrink  from  that,  as  they  would  never 
shrink  from  German  shells.  *'  To  take,"  as  a 
soldier  has  said,  **  as  much  pride  in  being 
Christian  as  you  do  in  being  British.  And  to 
get  rid  of  the  old  idea  that  a  man's  Christianity 
is  judged  by  his  silence  about  it."  To  preach 
without  preaching ;  to  let  your  light  shine 
before  men  without  pride  or  priggishness ;  to 
live  at  a  higher  level,  without  any  look  or 
manner  which  suggests  ''see  how  good  I  am." 
It  is  hard.  It  is  utterly  and  hopelessly  impos- 
sible without  the  power  of  God.  But  that 
power  is  just  what  the  genuine  Christian  gets, 
because  he  keeps  himself  in  touch  with  it. 
Every  man  who  is  "strengthened  with  all 
might  by  His  Spirit  in  the  inner  man,"  how- 
ever frequent  his  failings,  if  he  is  always 
trying,  always  pursuing,  is  co-operating  with 
the  crucified  Christ,  who  was  lifted  up  from  the 
earth  that  He  might  draw  all  men  to  an  ever 
higher  standard,  that  is  to  Himself 


lo.  SACRED  AND  SECULAR 

There  was  another  elementary  idea  in 
Judaism  closely  allied  with  their  notions  about 
''being  good."  Think  of  the  words  that  St 
Peter  heard  in  his  vision  at  Joppa :  ''What 
God  hath  cleansed  that  call  not  thou  common." 
It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  what  an  upheaval 
St  Peter's  ideas  underwent  at  that  moment. 
Ingrained  in  the  thoughts  of  every  Jew,  and 
traceable  to  the  most  primitive  past  of  Israel's 
tribal  history,  was  the  conviction  that  the 
contents  of  the  whole  world  could  be  divided 
by  a  hard  and  fast  line  into  two  groups — 
ceremonially  pure  and  ceremonially  impure, 
capable  of  being  used  and  incapable  of  being 
used  in  divine  worship,  clean  and  unclean, 
religious  and  secular,  sacred  and  profane. 
The  whole  nation  as  a  body  was  sacred,  for 
they  belonged  to  the  true  God  and  worshipped 
Him  ;  all  other  nations  were  profane,  for  they 
worshipped    other   gods.     And  because  every 

77 


;8  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

Israelite  was  consecrated  to  God,  certain  kinds 
of  foods  were  permitted  to  him,  and  were  called 
"  clean " ;  others  were  for  various  reasons 
forbidden,  and  they  were  '*  common "  and 
"unclean,"  as  St  Peter  calls  them.  But  there 
were  grades  even  in  the  all-embracing  sacred- 
ness  of  the  Jew.  The  priests  were  '*  holy,"  the 
laity  were,  in  comparison,  secular.  Every 
utensil  employed  in  the  temple  services  was 
sacred,  all  other  utensils  in  the  world  were 
common,  profane.  The  Sabbath  was  sacred, 
the  other  days  in  the  week  were  not.  And  so 
on.  I  doubt  if  any  one  idea  has  ever  struck 
its  roots  more  deeply  into  the  life  of  a  nation 
than  this  age-long  Semitic  feeling  that  all  the 
world  was  either  holy  or  the  reverse. 

The  first  Jew  who  dared  to  lift  up  his  voice 
against  it  was  Jesus.  Can  we  wonder  that  that 
was  the  real  cause  underlying  all  the  hostility 
against  Him  ?  He  violated  the  sacred  Sabbath 
by  performing  acts  of  healing,  because  He 
knew  that  the  Sabbath  was  not  so  sacred  as 
loving-kindness,  and  that  loving-kindness  could 
make  sacred  any  day  in  the  week.  The  pollu- 
tion of  eating  and  drinking  with  publicans  and 


SACRED   AND   SECULAR  79 

sinners  was  for  Him  no  pollution  when  it 
exhibited  the  compassion  of  the  Physician  who 
came  to  heal  sick  souls,  and  not  the  souls  that 
thought  themselves  healthy.  The  pollution 
of  sitting  down  to  dinner  with  unwashen  hands, 
and  that  of  eating  food  forbidden  by  Jewish 
law,  were  for  Him  no  pollution,  because  He 
knew  that  it  is  not  that  which  goeth  into  a  man 
that  defiles  him,  but  the  evil  thoughts  and 
words  that  come  out  of  him  ;  that  the  ceremonial 
cleanness  of  the  body  is  as  nothing  compared 
with  the  spiritual  cleanness^of  the  soul.  There 
was  hardly  one  conflict  between  Him  and  the 
Pharisees  that  did  not  arise  from  this  thunder- 
bolt that  He  cast  among  them,  this  daring 
rebellion  against  an  assumption  which  had  been 
to  every  Jew  as  unquestionable  as  the  air  that 
he  breathed.  And  though  St  Peter  had  been 
with  Him  for  months,  and  had  heard  and  seen 
all  this,  the  new  truth  took  a  long  time  to  sink 
into  him  ;  but  his  vision  at  Joppa  at  last  made 
it  clear  to  him  that  a  Jew  was  not  sacred 
because  he  was  a  Jew,  while  all  other  men 
were  common  and  unclean.  *'Of  a  truth  I 
perceive  that  God  is  no  respecter  of  persons  ; 


8o  THE   INCREASE   OF  GOD 

but  in  every  nation  he  that  feareth  Him  and 
worketh  righteousness  is  accepted  of  Him." 

Now  to  us  this  truth  seems  as  obvious  and 
certain  as  the  truth  that  the  earth  travels  round 
the  sun,  and  not  the  sun  round  the  earth.  And 
yet  that,  after  all,  never  crossed  the  imaginations 
of  men  until  Galileo  cast  his  thunderbolt.  Men 
to-day,  who  decline  to  call  themselves  Chris- 
tians, nevertheless  inherit  and  live  by  a  great 
body  of  truth  which  has  come  to  them  through 
Christianity  from  Christ  and  His  apostles. 
We  don't  think  that  the  Jewish  or  any  other 
nation  is  sacred,  and  all  others  profane.  We 
don't  think  that  certain  kinds  of  food  may  be 
eaten,  and  all  others  are  pollution.  We  don't 
think  it  wrong  for  a  doctor  to  give  his  patient 
medicine,  or  tie  a  bandage  for  him,  on  one  day 
in  the  week,  and  right  on  all  the  other  days. 
We  don't  think  that  to  sit  down  to  a  meal 
without  ceremonial  washings  is  a  sin  against 
God. 

And  yet  in  spite  of  all  this  we  find  it  hard — 
harder  than  we  can  express — to  be  free  of  the 
old  Jewish  notion.  It  seems  to  be  ingrained 
not  only  in  the  Semitic  mind,  but  in  the  whole 


SACRED   AND   SECULAR  8i 

of  human  nature,  that  Hfe  is,  after  all,  sharply- 
divided  into  sacred  and  profane.  I  believe  that 
this  primitive  idea  is  one  of  the  underlying- 
reasons  why  the  British  nation,  as  a  nation, 
is  not  Christian.  Capital  and  labour,  commerce, 
education,  politics,  and  law  are  one  and  all  tied 
and  bound  with  the  chain  of  this  mistake.  The 
nation  as  a  whole  thinks  that  what  it  does  in 
church  is  sacred,  and  what  it  does  elsewhere 
is  secular  ;  that  what  we  say  on  our  knees  to 
God  is  holy,  and  what  we  say  all  the  rest  of 
the  day  is  non-holy.  Everything  that  we  can 
explicitly  connect  with  religion  stands  on  one 
side  of  the  line,  and  everything  else — the  great 
mass  of  our  life — on  the  other.  And  so  we 
talk  about  religious  history  and  secular  history, 
religious  literature  and  secular  literature, 
religious  occupations  and  secular  occupations, 
religious  education  and  secular  education.  We 
put  our  life  into  two  water-tight  compartments 
as  rigidly  as  any  Pharisee. 

But  the  teaching  of  Christ  and  His  aposdes 

declares  that  this  is  wholly  and  utterly  wrong  ; 

that  it  is  a  primitive  notion  which  must  be  put 

away  with  other  childish  things.     And  to  break 

6 


82  THE   INCREASE   OF  GOD 

away  from  it  means  an  upheaval,  a  complete 
transformation,  of  most  of  our  dominant  Ideas 
and  feelings.  See  what  it  involves.  When 
Jesus  Christ,  a  few  years  before  St  Peter's 
vision,  had  with  His  master  hand  swept  away 
the  dividing  line  between  sacred  and  secular. 
He  did  not  level  down,  He  levelled  tip.  What 
the  Jew  had  thought  clean  remained  clean  ;  the 
sacred  remained  sacred.  But  the  secular — the 
ordinary,  common,  every-day,  non-holy,  cere- 
monially unclean — was  exalted  to  be  secular 
no  longer.  The  revolution  that  He  made  in 
Jewish  thought  was  that  all  life  is  holy  because 
God  fills  all  life.  If  you  want  to  be  Christlike, 
all  that  you  ever  held  sacred — the  sacraments, 
prayer,  public  and  private,  the  study  of  the 
Bible,  family  love,  every  thought  of  God,  the 
divine  beauty  of  purity,  the  divine  radiancy 
of  truth — all  this  will  be  as  sacred  as  ever.  But 
it  will  only  honour  these  things  the  more 
to  exalt  the  rest  of  your  life  to  the  same  high 
level.  Other- worldliness  is  not  separation  from 
this  world,  but  an  acute  consciousness  of  the 
other  world  in  this  one.  A  saint  is  not 
a   person    who   does   a   great    many    religious 


SACRED   AND   SECULAR  83 

things,    but    a    person    who    does    everything 
religiously. 

Your  work — your  ordinary,  common,  matter- 
of-fact,  humdrum,  daily  work — at  home,  in  a 
school,  an  office,  a  house  of  business,  a  work- 
shop, or  the  thousand  disagreeable,  or  painful, 
or  perilous  duties  expected  from  you  if  you 
are  a  soldier.  Are  you  inclined  to  feel  that 
all  this  is  not  religious  at  all  ?  But  you  can 
fnake  it  religious.  You  are  tempted  to  confine 
your  religion  to  Church  services.  But  instead 
of  that,  carry  your  religion  into  your  work ; 
raise  your  work  to  the  level  of  your  religion  ; 
make  them  both  equally  holy.  Many  people 
will  find,  the  moment  that  they  try  to  do  this, 
what  a  wide  gulf  they  have  hitherto  fixed 
between  them.  You  are  tempted  to  let  your 
prayers  become  what  has  been  called  ''  the 
perfunctory  adjunct  of  dressing  and  undressing." 
Make  them  no  longer  an  adjunct ;  make  them 
the  very  air  that  you  breathe  throughout  the 
day.  In  every  kind  of  work  that  man  or 
woman  can  do  there  is  an  element  of  drudgery. 
Sometimes  there  seems  to  be  nothing  but 
drudgery,  nothing  but  mechanical  routine,  that 


84  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

eats  the  heart  out  of  life.  There  is  only  one 
cure  for  that.  Do  your  mechanical  routine  ybr 
God,  and  not  merely  for  your  daily  bread.  Fill 
it  with  prayer ;  raise  it  to  the  level  of  your 
religion  ;  let  the  perfection  of  your  diligence, 
accuracy,  punctuality,  scrupulous  conscientious- 
ness, become  a  continuous  divine  service.  What 
God  hath  cleansed,  that  call  not  thou  common. 
Sweep  away  the  dividing  line  between  the 
sacred  and  the  secular ;  try  to  give  Him 
pleasure  in  the  smallest  details ;  and  your 
drudgery  will  be,  radiant  with  the  beauty  of 
holiness. 

And  the  same  is  true  of  our  daily  intercourse 
with  men.  It  is  primitive  and  childish  to  think 
that  while  intercourse  with  God  is  sacred,  inter- 
course with  men  is  secular,  ordinary,  non-sacred. 
Since  the  life  of  God  is  straining  after  self- 
fulfilment  in  every  man  and  woman,  call  not 
earthly  friendships  common  ;  and  be  not  guilty 
of  making  them  common.  There  is  one  thing 
that  can  defile  a  man — the  evil  thoughts  and 
words  that  come  out  of  him.  The  daily  con- 
versations about  what  we  call  ordinary  things, 
keep  them  transparently  true,  keep  them  spot- 


SACRED    AND    SECULAR  85 

lessly  pure.  If  it  were  right  to  divide  life  into 
holy  and  non-holy,  this  would  be  superfluous  ; 
but  if  you  are  to  sweep  away  the  dividing  line 
between  sacred  and  secular,  you  must  level  up 
your  daily  intercourse.  There  must  be  nothing 
incongruous  between  your  talks  with  your 
friends  and  your  talks  with  the  one  Friend 
who  is  above  all  others.  The  men  who  mistake 
vulgarity  for  manliness  are  not  ''grown-up" 
enough  to  realize  that  ?nanly  and  Christian  are 
the  same,  because  Christ  was  man. 

Once  more,  your  troubles.  None  can  measure 
or  recount  the  world's  anguish  save  Him  who 
bears  all  its  griefs  and  carries  its  sorrows. 
People  meet  trouble  in  various  ways.  Some 
are  driven  by  it  into  dull  and  sullen  revolt,  in 
which  the  heart's  rebellion  is  too  deep  for 
many  words,  but  it  strangles  and  chokes  all 
that  is  best  in  them.  Some  of  a  shallower 
character  give  vent  to  their  feelings  in  a  peevish 
and  irritable  discontent ;  which  makes  it  difficult 
for  others  to  be  sorry  for  them  and  sympathize 
with  them  ;  and  that  adds  to  their  grievance. 
Others,  again,  profess  a  pious  submission  with 
their  lips  ;  they  say,  "God's  will  be  done,"  but 


S6  THE    INCREASE   OF  GOD 

they  mean,  "  I  suppose  God's  will  must  be  done 
whether  I  like  it  or  not ;  but  it  is  very  hard  on 
me  that  I  should  have  all  this  trouble  when  I 
haven't  deserved  it,  and  I  know  a  good  many 
people  that  do  deserve  it  and  don't  get  it !  " 
And  so  men  go  on,  with  their  heart  torn  and 
restless,  defiant  or  repining,  or  crushed,  because 
they  have  not  yet  learnt  the  great  lesson  that 
Christ  taught  the  Jews  ;  they  have  not  swept 
away  the  dividing  line  between  religion  and  the 
rest  of  their  lives ;  they  have  not  made  their 
troubles  part  of  their  religion.  If  they  could 
only  put  away  childish  things,  and  grow  towards 
Christian  maturity,  they  would  raise  their  pain 
to  the  level  of  prayer,  and  their  sorrows  to  a 
holy  service. 


II.  VALUES 

Much  more  might  be  said  about  the  relics  in 
our  Christianity  of  elementary  Jewish  ideas  to 
which  our  thoughts  were  led  by  St  Paul's  words, 
''When  we  were  children."  But  if  we  turn 
to  his  similar  expression,  ''  When  I  was  a  child  " 
(i  Cor.  xiii.  ii),  we  pass  to  a  new  aspect  of 
growth.  He  uses  his  own  childhood  and  man- 
hood as  pictures  of  the  beginning  and  the  final 
aim  of  the  Christian  life.  There  can  be  no 
jump  from  childhood  to  manhood  ;  it  is  a  matter 
of  growth.  And  in  the  next  verse  the  thought 
is  continued — "  Now  we  see  by  means  of  a 
reflector,  enigmatically,  obscurely,  distortedly  ; 
but  then  face  to  face."  The  metaphor  in  itself 
does  not  suggest  growth  ;  it  can  represent  only 
the  initial  and  the  final  stage.  But  the  second 
half  of  the  verse  explains  it — "  Now  I  know 
partially,  but  then  shall  I  know  as  completely 
and  perfectly  as  I  was  all  along  known  by  God." 
There  can  be  no  jump  in   spiritual   sight  and 

87 


88  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

knowledge,  it  is  a  matter  of  growth.  *'  Mean- 
time (ver.  1 3)  of  abiding  value  are — not  spiritual 
ecstasies  in  which  men  are  gifted  with  prophesy- 
ings,  or  tongues,  or  immediate  mystical  intuitions 
of  things  divine  (ver.  8),  but — faith,  hope,  and 
above  all,  love."  In  the  previous  chapter 
(xii.  1-30),  the  apostle  has  dwelt  on  the  various 
charismata,  gifts  which  God  has  distributed  to 
members  of  the  Church  for  the  advantage  of 
the  Church;  and  he  proceeds  (ver.  31),  ''You  are 
keen,  and  rightly  keen,  to  possess  the  greater 
charismata  \  and  yet  (xiii.  1)  1  show  you  a  way 
{lit.  '  road,'  the  word  implies  movement,  pro- 
gress) along  which  you  can  travel  to  bring  still 
more  abundant  glory  to  God  and  advantage  to 
the  Church."  Then  follows  his  inspired  chant 
in  praise  of  love,  after  which  he  continues  (xiv.  i) 
— "  Pursue  after  love,  and  then  you  can  be  as 
keen  as  you  like  to  possess  the  charismata, 
especially  prophecy."  (The  word  ''  pursue," 
again,  implies  movement,  progress.)  If  xii.  i- 
xiv.  I  is  thus  read  as  a  connected  whole,  as  it 
ought  to  be  read,  it  will  be  seen  that  its  object 
is  to  contrast  the  value  of  spiritual  gifts  with  the 
value  of  spiritual  growth  in  love. 


VALUES  89 

And  this  at  once  suggests  a  well-known 
characteristic  of  a  child's  intelligence.  "  When 
I  was  a  child  ...  I  thought  as  a  child,  I 
calculated  as  a  child."  My  notions  of  the 
respective  vahies  of  things  were  widely  different 
from  the  notions  which  I  acquired  when  I 
became  a  man.  If,  before  the  days  when  we 
began  to  live  on  paper,  you  offered  to  a  child 
three  or  four  years  old  a  very  bright  penny  and 
a  very  dull  sovereign,  there  was  little  doubt 
which  he  would  probably  choose.  And  those 
who  are  spiritually  childish,  whose  souls  are 
not  growing,  display  their  immaturity,  as 
children  do,  quite  openly  and  unconsciously. 
It  is  possible  to  see  something  pretty  and 
winning  in  a  small  child's  total  ignorance  of 
values  ;  but  the  same  ignorance  in  an  adult  is 
grotesque  and  painful  ;  it  may  amount  to 
imbecility.  To  get  earthly  success  with  its 
fame  and  power,  to  make  money — or  inherit  it 
without  making  it — with  the  bodily  comforts 
and  enjoyments,  and  the  social  status  which 
money  l.ings,  may  be  all  very  pleasant,  and  in 
no  sense  wrong  in  itself.  But  it  is  like  the 
bright    penny,   which    is    not   gold    though    it 


90  THE   INCREASE   OF 'GOD 

glitters  ;  and  the  child  snatches  at  it  as  though 
it  were  really  worth  having  for  its  own  sake. 
We  may  well  ask  ourselves  how  much,  in  this 
respect,  we  have  grown  up. 

And  this  incapacity  to  judge  of  the  true 
values  of  things  is  sometimes  very  noticeable 
in  connection  with  **  gifts."  I  have  tried  else- 
where to  speak  of  the  true  meaning  of 
'*  talents."  Talents  do  not  belong  to  a  slave  ; 
they  are  simply  the  master's  property  handed 
over  to  him  to  use  for  the  master's  purposes. 
But  we  are  now  concerned  with  a  particular 
thought  in  the  parable,  /.^.,^the  nature  of  the 
use  that  ought  to  be  made  of  them.  The 
trading  with  them  so  as  to  gain  other  five — or 
tv/o — talents  is  a  picture  of  growth.  And  if 
the  one  talent,  instead  of  being  hidden  in  the 
earth,  had  been  deposited  in  a  bank  and  had 
produced  even  a  minimum  of  interest,  there 
would  at  least  have  been  some  growth.  But  it 
frequently  happens  that  it  is  not  the  one  talent 
that  is  misused,  but  the  five.  Let  us  construct 
a  little  parable  to  illustrate  this  point  of  view. 
There  was  a  certain  mother  who  gave  five 
shillings    to    one    child    and    one    shilling   to 


VALUES  91 

another;  and  said,  "  Go  and  do  the  best  that 
you  can  with  this  money,  so  as  to  render  to  me 
a  present  that  will  give  me  as  much  pleasure 
as  possible."  So  the  child  that  had  received 
the  five  shillings  boasted  that  she  was  so 
''gifted  "  and  "  talented,"  and  felt  a  little  scorn 
for  her  sister  who  could  not  render  to  her- 
mother  a  present  anything  like  so  valuable. 
And  she  went  to  a  post  office  and  bought  sixty 
penny  stamps.  But  the  child  who  had  received 
the  one  shilling  was  filled  with  the  desire  to 
give  her  mother  as  much  pleasure  as  possible. 
And  after  long  thought  she  laid  out  the  shilling 
on  materials,  and  worked  a  little  gift.  Such  a 
trumpery  little  affair  it  was  !  She  scarcely 
liked  to  offer  it  when  it  was  done  ;  a  far  better 
article  could  have  been  bought  with  sixty  penny 
stamps.  But  for  all  that,  she  had  a  happy 
feeling  that  her  mother  would  like  it  after  all  ; 
and  all  the  time  she  was  at  work  upon  it  she 
was  looking  forward  eagerly  to  the  moment 
when  she  could  offer  her  present.  Her  shilling 
had  grown  immeasurably  in  value  because  her 
use  of  it  was  inspired  by  love,  while  the  other 
child  gave  no  pleasure  at  all. 


92  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

It  is  a  special  and  peculiar  danger  of  those 
who  work  for  God  to  think  that  He  is  pleased 
by  the  face-value  of  the  visible  results  which 
they  render  to  Him.  A  clergyman  has  a 
''gift"  for  preaching.  But  God  is  not  neces- 
sarily pleased  with  him  simply  because  he  fills 
his  church.  That  may  be  only,  so  to  speak, 
the  equivalent  in  stamps.  A  gift  for  preaching 
will  naturally  fill  the  church.  His  wife,  again, 
has  a  wonderful  ''gift"  for  organization,  and 
for  getting  people  to  work.  And  the  results 
in  bazaars,  or  clubs,  or  Red  Cross  depots  are 
very  striking.  But  it  is  quite  possible  that  she 
is  giving  little  or  no  pleasure  to  God.  So  far 
as  outward  results  go,  they  may  simply  be  His 
gift  doing  its  inevitable  work ;  and  if  her 
activities  are  not  inspired  with  love  for  Him, 
she  can  only  say  to  Him,  "  Lo,  there  Thou  hast 
that  is  Thine."  Both  these  people,  if  they  are 
proud  of  their  gifts  and  of  the  visible  results, 
are  as  children  ;  they  have  not  grown  up 
enough  to  know  the  true  value  of  things. 
They  have  not  learnt  to  say,  "  Though  I  have 
the  gifts  of  men  and  angels,  and  have  not  love, 
I  am  nothing."     We  need  not,  after  all,  have 


VALUES  93 

constructed  our  little  parable ;  we  have  one 
ready  to  hand.  The  rich  of  their  wealth  cast 
in  much  into  the  treasury,  but  the  poor  widow 
of  her  penury  cast  in  more  than  they  all, 
because  she  gave  all  that  she  had.  All  that 
we  have  is  ourselves,  our  obedience,  and  know- 
ledge, and  love,  thrown,  lavished  upon  God 
with  the  sole  desire  of  self-giving.  Outward 
results  may  take  care  of  themselves  ;  man 
looketh  on  them,  but  God  looketh  on  the 
inward  results,  the  joy  that  He  receives  when 
His  love  is  met  by  the  response  of  a  selfless 
love.  As  St  Paul  teaches  us,  pursue  after 
love,  strive  and  pray  for  the  inward  growth, 
and  then,  and  then  only,  you  will  be  safe  in 
being  keen  to  possess  the  best  gifts  that  God 
sees  fit  to  give  you. 

There  is  one  group  of  gifts  in  particular 
that  ought  to  be  mentioned.  I  believe  that 
large  numbers  of  Christians  do  not  realize  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  natural  aptitude  for 
piety,  a  gift  of  religious  feeling,  which  they 
have  neither  created  nor  acquired  for  them- 
selves.  It  has  come  to  them  by  temperament, 
which  is  often  due  to  heredity,  not  necessarily 


94  THE   INCREASE   OF  GOD 

from  parents,  but  perhaps  from  remoter  ances- 
tors. And  then  God  has  given  favourable 
circumstances  which  rendered  easy  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  gift,  such  as  spare  time,  congenial 
surroundings,  proximity  to  a  church  which 
appeals  to  them,  and  so  on.  For  such  persons 
it  is  extremely  easy  to  be  pious.  They  have 
been  entrusted  with  five  talents,  while  others 
have  only  two  or  one.  Broadly  speaking, 
women  appear  to  be  temperamentally  more 
inclined  to  piety  than  men. 

And  those  who  have  been  entrusted  with 
this  particular  talent  incur  two  dangers.  One 
is  the  ever-recurring  danger  of  pride.  "  Lord, 
I  thank  thee  that  I  am  not  like  a  good  many 
other  people.  I  fast  in  Lent,  and  go  to  church 
on  week  days,  and  very  frequently  to  the  Holy 
Communion,  and  regularly  to  confession,  etc." 
Another  form  of  the  same  pride  is  that  which 
condemns  what  is  called  a  ''fallen  woman,"  an 
outcast,  a  sinner,  whom  ''thoroughly  good 
people  "  can  have  nothing  to  do  with.  Think 
of  the  circumstances,  the  surroundings,  the 
training — or  want  of  training — the  hereditary 
instincts,  the  temperament,  the  ignorance,  which 


VALUES  95 

have  contributed  to  produce  such  a  woman. 
And  ask  yourself,  what  does  God  expect  from 
me  and  from  her  ?  To  whom  much  is  given, 
from  him  (or  her)  shall  much  be  required. 
One  talent  is  not  expected  to  produce  as  much 
as  fivQ.  The  only  question  for  you  is,  What 
am  I  doing  with  my  five  ? 

The  other  danger  of  those  who  are  richly 
dowered  with  the  spiritual  gift  of  temperamental 
piety  is  that  which  has  been  already  mentioned. 
They  are  tempted  to  be  satisfied  with  the  out- 
ward acts  of  piety  as  things  in  themselves,  and 
to  imagine  that  God  is  satisfied.  Fastings, 
daily  services,  communions,  confessions,  and 
all  the  rest  of  it — these,  in  themselves,  may  be 
only  (to  use  again  our  former  metaphor)  the 
equivalent  in  stamps  ;  they  are  only  what  the 
gift  easily  and  inevitably  produces.  When  the 
pious  person  has  done  them  all,  he  (or  she)  can 
only  say,  "  Lo,  there  Thou  hast  that  is  Thine  ; 
I  have  merely  done  what  I  was  bound  to  do, 
what  came  natural  to  me,  what  I  could  hardly 
help  doing,  placed  and  constituted  as  I  am." 
Spiritual  gifts,  like  any  other  talents,  become 
a  deadly  snare  if  they  are  used  in  any  other 


96  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

way  but  as  talents.  To  say  this,  of  course,  is 
not  to  belittle  the  religious  acts.  They  are,  as 
said  above,  necessary,  indispensable  means. 
But  the  supreme  question  always  remains  to  be 
asked  :  Is  the  hidden,  spiritual  life  of  my  soul, 
my  obedience,  knowledge,  and  love,  a  growth 
which  is  anything  like  proportionate  to  my 
gifts  ?  And  an  honest  answer  to  that  is  capable 
of  changing  the  most  pious  person  on  earth 
from  the  Pharisee  into  the  publican. 


12.  SIZE 

"When  I  was  a  child  I  calculated  as  a 
child."  This  inability  to  recognize  the  relative 
value  of  things  often  shews  itself  in  another 
way.  We  find  it  absurdly  difficult  to  refrain 
from  attaching  value  to  mere  size.  It  is  another 
instance  of  the  childish  propensity  to  prefer  a 
penny  to  a  sovereign,  or  let  us  say  a  big  glass 
marble  to  a  small  diamond.  There  are  number- 
less instances,  of  course,  in  which  the  true 
principle  is  recognized  readily  enough.  A 
large  army  has  many  times  in  history  been 
beaten  by  a  small  one.  A  miniature  by  a  great 
master  is  worth  more  than  many  square  yards 
of  amateur  daubing.  The  size  of  a  smallpox 
bacillus  is  not  the  measure  of  its  capacity  for 
mischief,  and  so  on.  Yet  many  people  fail  to 
grasp  this  same  principle  in  some  very  important 
matters.  You  will  find  thinking  men  and  women, 
for  example,  who  are  disturbed  by  the  thought 
of  the  littleness  of  man.      They  contemplate  the 

7  97  ^ 


98  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

shortness  of  the  time  during  which  man  has 
lived  on  the  earth  in  comparison  with  the  un- 
numbered ages  that  went  before  him.  They 
think  of  the  unimaginable  distances  discovered 
by  astronomy,  and  point  to  the  fact  that  our 
little  world  is  only  one  item  in  a  solar  system 
which  is  itself  only  a  speck  in  a  multitude  of 
similar  systems  in  the  whirling  universe  of 
worlds.  And  then  they  ask,  '*  Isn't  it  ridiculous 
to  suppose  that  the  God  who  reveals  Himself 
in  this  vast  universe,  and  carries  it  along  by 
the  ceaseless  force  of  His  will,  can  have  become 
Incarnate  In  our  infinitesimal  pinprick  of  a  planet, 
for  the  sake  of  the  infinitesimal  group  of  organ- 
Isms  called  men  ?  "  But  the  childish  conception 
of  the  value  of  size  could  not  find  a  more 
flagrant  illustration  than  In  the  idea  that  mere 
bigness  in  space  and  time  can  have  the  slightest 
bearing  on  the  importance  of  man.  Recall 
apfain  the  words  of  Psalm  viii.  The  Psalmist 
began  as  though  he  held  the  childish  notion  : 
**  When  I  consider  Thy  heavens,  the  works  of 
Thy  fingers,  the  moon  and  the  stars  which  Thou 
hast  ordained,  what  Is  man  that  Thou  art  mind- 
ful of  him,  or  the  son  of  man  that  Thou  visitest 


SIZE  99 

him  ? "  But  the  next  moment  he  put  it  away 
from  him,  and  burst  out  with  joy,  "  Thou  madest 
him  but  Httle  short  of  divine,  and  didst  crown 
him  with  glory  and  honour,  and  didst  set  him 
over  the  works  of  Thy  hands,  and  didst  put  all 
things  in  subjection  under  his  feet."  And  when 
God  became  Incarnate,  it  did  not  mean  that  a 
very  big  God  shut  Himself  up  in  a  man's  little 
body.  We  must  resolutely  put  away  every 
thought  which  attributes  size  to  God.  If  He 
can  occupy  space,  we  must  be  prepared  to 
maintain  that  love,  or  will,  or  knowledge  can 
occupy  space.  Our  thoughts  are  carried  back 
to  the  great  truths  that  we  have  already  studied. 
The  energy  of  the  life  of  God  was  potentially 
self-fulfilled  in  the  whole  body  of  humanity, 
because  it  was  perfectly  self-fulfilled  in  one 
Man.  And  the  intensity  of  the  divine  life,  its 
knowledge,  and  will,  and  love,  continues  to 
fulfil  itself  in  every  individual  human  being  in 
proportion  to  his  growth  towards  the  measure 
of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ.  Life 
has  no  dimensions.  But  we  need  to  be  ''grown 
up  "  to  get  a  real  and  living  grasp  of  the  fact. 
Let  us  close  this   chapter  with  a   practical 


100  THE   INCREASE   OF  GOD 

detail  in  which  a  recognition  of  the  truth  will 
help  us.  It  will  help  us  to  make  another  attack 
on  the  childish  fallacy  that  success  in  religious 
work  can  be  reckoned  by  figures.  A  parish 
with  a  large  roll  of  confirmation  candidates,  or 
of  Easter  communicants,  a  large  number  of 
organizations,  a  large  number  of  meetings, 
committees,  and  clubs,  a  large  number  of  hours 
spent  on  them,  is  almost  always  thought  to  be 
a  successful  parish.  It  may  be,  of  course  ;  but 
it  is  not  the  largeness  that  makes  it  so.  Some 
clergymen  even  think  that  a  large  parish  pleases 
God  better  than  a  small  one.  All  this,  by  itself, 
is  mere  size.  The  pride  of  being  busy  is  near 
akin  to  the  pride  of  being  ''good."  The  so- 
called  successful  clergyman,  of  whom  men  think 
highly,  with  rush,  and  push,  and  go,  and  a  net- 
work of  activities,  is  often  in  real  danger  of 
leading  few  souls  nearer  to  God.  If  the  dis- 
sipation of  energy  is  a  fact  in  the  material 
world,  it  is  a  daily  glaring  fact  in  the  spiritual 
world.  The  over-busy  worker  who  has  little 
time  for  prayer  and  thought,  and  therefore  little 
chance  of  inward  growth,  is  like  a  shivering 
man  who  has  a  large  grate  piled  up  with  paper. 


SIZE  loi 

wood,  and  coal,  and  no  :natch  with  which  to 
light  it.  Can  anything  be  done  to  persuade 
some  clergymen  and  their  church  workers  to 
ask  themselves  the  question,  which  is  of  greater 
value — much  coal  or  a  little  warmth  ?  It  is  not 
only  because  iniquity  abounds,  but  sometimes 
because  activity  abounds,  that  the  love  of  many 
waxes  cold.  *'A  little  leaven  leaveneth  the 
whole  lump  "  ;  and  no  extra  magnitude  of  the 
lump  will  compensate  for  the  lack  of  leaven. 
A  parish,  whatever  its  size,  is  a  successful 
parish  only  if  it  is  lightened  with  celestial  fire. 
And  those  who  are  to  be  the  Holy  Spirit's 
instruments  to  set  it  alight  must — even  at  the 
cost  of  diminishing  the  record  of  their  organiza- 
tions and  work — make  time  to  keep  themselves 
hot.  When  Canon  Body  was  once  asked  what 
sort  of  line  he  generally  took  in  conducting 
Retreats  for  the  clergy,  his  answer  was,  "  1 
generally  tell  them  to  repent."  And  his  words 
still  live.  Repentance  is  the  first  need  of  all 
who  are  allowing  work  to  interfere  with  their 
growth. 


13.  PARTIES 

By  his  metaphor  of  childhood  St  Paul  has 
led  us  in  several  ways  to  confess  our  lack  -of 
growth.  But  he  employs  it  yet  again  in 
I  Corinthians  iii.  1-4,  a  passage  which  may 
lead  us  to  further  searchings  of  heart.  When 
he  originally  preached  to  the  Corinthians  he 
was  obliged,  quite  naturally  and  properly,  to 
speak  to  them  as  unto  babes  in  Christ,  feeding 
them  with  milk,  and  not  with  strong  food  which 
they  were  not  grown  up  enough  to  digest. 
But  he  sadly  complains  that  they  were  not 
grown  up  enough  even  now  ;  they  were  still 
undeveloped  children.  In  particular,  their 
failure  to  grow  had  shewn  itself  in  the  party 
spirit,  the  factious  bickerings  which  had  gone 
far  to  split  the  Church  at  Corinth  into  disunion, 
and  to  which  he  devotes  the  first  four  chapters 
of  the  first  epistle.  The  parties  took  the 
names  of  Paul,  Apollos,  Cephas,  and  Christ,  as 
their  respective  watchwords  (i.  12).  The  aims 
and  tendencies  of  the  several  groups  form  an 


PARTIES  103 

interesting  subject   of   New  Testament  study. 
But  what  concerns  us  here  is  the  uncomfortable 
fact   that    St   Paul    condemns    party   divisions 
among  Christians  as  childish,     "  I   am  of  the 
Church   Times,  and  I  of  the  Gitardian,  and  I 
of  the  Challenge,  and  I  of  the^^^r^r^I"     Not 
long  ago  I  heard  one  of  these  papers  described 
as    ''sometimes    very   unchristian."     And    the 
speaker  was   one  whose   general  outlook  was 
more   in   line  with    that   paper    than  with    the 
others.     Have  we  grown  up,   in   this  respect, 
much  more  than  the   Corinthians  }     It  is    not 
the    holding    of    different    opinions    that    the 
aposde   condemns.     I    am  quite  sure  that  his 
own    mental    outlook    on    the     multitude    of 
problems  and  mysteries  of  Christianity,  which 
were  looming  larger  as  the  years  went  on,  must 
have  differed  widely  in  many  ways  from  that 
of  Apollos  and  Cephas.     What  stirred  him  to 
the  depths  was  the  silliness,  the  crude  childish- 
ness, of  being  proud  of  a  party  label,  and  the 
consequent     division     and     weakness     of    the 
Church,   which  needed  all    the   strength    of  a 
united    front    to    make    headway   against    the 
heathenism  of  such  a  place  as  Corinth.     Can 


104  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

any  Christian  deny  that  our  greatest  and  most 
terribly  urgent  need  is  a  united  front  to  make 
headway  against  the  profound  depth  of  in- 
difference to  everything  religious  on  which, 
in  the  great  mass  of  the  population,  even  the 
war  has  been  unable  to  produce  more  than  a. 
surface  ripple  ?  There  is  a  world  of  difference 
between  diversity  and  division.  I  am  certain 
that  St  Paul  would  not  have  wished  us  to 
"  scrap  our  differences."  The  most  cursory 
study  of  his  epistles  will  shew  what  he  felt 
about  sacrificing  religious  convictions.  The 
adoption  of  reduced  Christianity,  undenomina- 
tionalism,  the  minimum  which  all  can  accept, 
he  would  have  hotly  repudiated.  But  he 
would  have  exhorted  us  to  be  imitators  of  him 
in  his  clear  and  fearless  expression  of  what  he 
believed  to  be  truth  together  ivitk  his  readiness 
to  be  all  things  to  all  men,  if  by  any  means  he 
might  win  some  ;  in  his  steely  loyalty  to  the 
revelation  which  he  had  received  together  with 
a  love  that  ''  is  not  easily  provoked,  thinketh 
no  evil."  It  was  this  spiritual  balance  and 
equilibrium  that  marked  him  as  a  mature,  fully- 
grown  man,    who  had   put   away  the   childish 


PARTIES  105 

small-mindedness  which  was  still  producing 
shrill  cries  and  noisy  disturbances  among  the 
little  Corinthians.  We  are  so  tempted  to  feel 
that  while  other  people  ought  to  give  up  their 
factiousness,  and  drop  their  labels,  and  stop 
their  quarrelsome  shouts,  our  party  is  in  the 
right,  our  party  has  the  best,  the  noblest,  the 
widest,  the  highest,  the  deepest,  the  simplest, 
in  short,  the  truest  Christianity.  And  the  other 
people  think  the  same  about  their  party  ;  and 
so  it  goes  on. 

Our  unhappy  divisions  are  open  sore::,  and 
until  they  have  been  bound  up  and  mollified 
with  ointment  the  Body  of  Christ  will  never  be 
in  health.  If  we  listen  in  deep  silence  to 
hearken  what  He  will  say  unto  us,  we  may 
hear  well-known  words  with,  perhaps,  a 
meaning  in  them  that  had  not  reached  us 
before  :  "  Have  I  been  so  long  with  you,  and 
yet  hast  thou  not  known  Me  ?  "  Have  I  been 
nineteen  centuries  living,  striving,  straining 
after  self-fulfilment  in  My  Body,  the  Church, 
and  yet  hast  thou  not  known  Me  in  every 
single  member  who  is  striving  to  co-operate 
with  Me  by  spiritual    growth  ?     Views   as   to 


io6  THE   INCREASE  OF  GOD 

the  best  methods  of  growing  necessarily  differ ; 
souls  differ,  and  need  different  methods.  But 
if  we  could  see  Him  and  love  Him  in  every 
soul  that  is  striving  to  grow  by  any  methods 
whatsoever,  it  would  do  more  for  the  Body  of 
Christ,  "  for  the  building  up  of  itself  in  love," 
for  its  ''  increase  with  the  increase  of  God," 
than  any  number  of  compromises  and  premature 
schemes  of  intercommunion.  Part  of  St  Paul's 
description  of  the  Body  is  that  "  there  are 
diversities  of  operation  (effects  of  energy),  but 
the  same  Lord."  Diversity  without  division  is 
the  condition  of  every  living  organism  above 
the  protoplasm.  And  the  more  it  grows  in 
articulation  and  complexity,  the  more  diverse 
its  parts  and  functions  become.  And  if  for 
**  parts  "  we  say  '*  parties,"  we  need  not  lose 
sight  of  the  same  principle.  Parties  can  be  a 
sign  of  healthy  growth  in  the  Body  of  Christ  ; 
they  can  "  provoke  one  another  to  love  and  to 
good  works."  It  is  when  they  provoke  one 
another  to  dislike,  and  sneers,  and  imputation 
of  wrong  motives  that  division  has  set  in. 
They  would  not  do  that  if  every  member  of 
every  party  were  "  endeavouring  to  keep  the 
unity  of  the  Spirit  in  the  bond  of  peace." 


14.  AN    EXAMPLE 

If    we  turn    from  the  children  to  the  grown 
man  we  have  a  fine    example   of  selflessness. 
Think  how  much  is  contained    in    the   verses 
which  immediately  follow  those  that  we  have 
been  studying:  ''What  then  is  Apollos  ?  and 
what   is    Paul?     Ministers   through  whom   ye 
became  believers,  and   to    each    as    the    Lord 
gave.     I    planted,   Apollos    watered,  but    God 
produced  the  growth.     So  that  neither    is   he 
that  planteth  anything,  nor  he  that  watereth, 
but  He  that  produceth    the  growth,  (namely) 
God.       And   he    that    planteth    and    he    that 
watereth  are  one,  and  each   shall    receive   his 
own  reward   according  to  his  own  labour,  for 
we  are  God's  fellow-workers.     Ye   are    God's 
husbandry,  ye  are  God's  building"  (i  Cor.  iii. 
5.9).     Here  we  have  the  quintessence  of  the 
apostle's    teaching    about    **  gifts,"    which    he 
afterwards    expands    in  xii.    i-xiv.   i.     Apollos 
and  himself  were  merely  ministers,  servants,  to 


107 


io8  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

whom  God  gave  certain  gifts  to  fit  them  for 
certain  functions.  And  the  purpose  of  these 
functions  was  the  growth  of  the  members  of 
the  Church.  It  was  natural,  easy,  inevitable, 
that  a  man  with  St  Paul's  gifts  should  have 
planted,  and  that  a  man  with  Apollos'  gifts 
should  have  watered.  What  neither  of  them 
could  do  was  to  make  souls  grow.  That  was 
done  by  the  indwelling  energy  of  the  life  of 
God.  And  the  same  truth  is  then  taught  with 
a  different  metaphor  in  verses  10-12,  just  intro- 
duced in  the  last  clause  of  verse  9.  St  Paul  had 
received  gifts  to  enable  him  to  lay  a  foundation  ; 
another  ,z.e,,  Apollos,  to  enable  him  to  go  on  with 
the  building.  But  all  that  they  could  do  was 
utterly  valueless  without  the  indwelling  Spirit 
of  God  in  His  temple  (ver.  16,  17),  which  made 
the  Corinthians  what  are  called,  in  i  Peter  ii. 
5,  ''living  stones,  being  built  up  into  a  spiritual 
house."  It  was  only  because,  as  St  Paul  says 
(ver.  9),  he  and  Apollos  were  "  God's  fellow- 
workers  "  that  the  result  could  be  growth. 
The  workers,  in  themselves,  were  ''nothing" 
(ver.  7) ;  in  God  they  were  "  one  "  (ver.  8). 
It  is  a  heart-searching  sermon  to  all  religious 


AN   EXAMPLE  109 

workers.  See  iv.  6,  7,  where  he  shews  that 
that  was  what  he  intended  it  to  be.  The  clergy, 
and  others,  who  plant  and  water,  lay  founda- 
tions and  build,  are  sometimes  beset  by  the 
temptation  to  think  that  because  they  have 
planted,  or  laid  a  foundation,  in  the  spiritual 
life  of  some  soul,  the  results  will  not  be  so  good 
if  anyone  else  does  the  subsequent  watering 
or  building.  If  we  are  not  grown  up,  as  St 
Paul  was,  we  find  it  very  difticult  to  accept  the 
fact  that  after  God  has  used  us  to  help  Him 
to  begin  a  good  work  in  some  one's  heart.  He 
may  see  best  to  use  another  worker  to  go  on 
and  finish  it.  We  are  tempted  to  think  of 
souls  as  some  doctors  think  of  their  **  cases," 
and  resent  the  intrusion  of  another  practitioner. 
We  like  to  have  the  credit  for  their  whole 
growth  in  grace,  and  we  like  to  retain  for 
ourselves  their  gratitude  and  devotion.  But 
this  attitude  is  simply  silly,  because  it  disregards 
the  primary  fact  that  the  work  is  God's  work, 
and  that  He  chooses  His  instruments  for  each 
little  piece  of  it  as  He  thinks  fit.  St  Paul  puts 
it  quite  clearly  in  iii.  8  :  "  Each  shall  receive  his 
own  reward  according  to  his  own  labour,  for 


no  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

we  are  God's  fellow- workers."  His  own  labour 
is  the  particular  portion  of  the  work  that  God 
chooses  to  assign  to  him,  and  to  be  jealous 
of  another  worker  who  is  assigned  another 
portion  is  childish.  To  give  place  to  another, 
or  to  share  our  work  with  another,  may  very 
likely  be  humbling,  but  our  pride  and  selffulness 
are  apt  to  make  us  call  it  ''humiliating,"  which 
is  quite  different. 

Later  in  this  epistle  St  Paul  shews  the  same 
perfect  readiness  to  acknowledge  the  labours 
of  other  workers.  He  knew  that  he  had,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  laboured  for  the  Corinthians 
harder  than  any  other  preachers  of  the  Gospel, 
but  he  knew  also  that  God  had  used  other 
labourers  beside  himself:  ''  I  laboured  more 
abundantly  than  they  all,  yet  not  I  but  the 
grace  of  God  which  was  with  me.  Whether, 
therefore,  it  were  I  or  they,  so  we  preach  and 
so  ye  believed"  (xv.  lo,  ii).  On  the  other 
hand,  in  Romans  xv.  20,  he  teaches  us  the 
converse  lesson  of  sympathy  with  the  feelings 
of  other  workers.  We  are  not  to  intrude  where 
God  has  not  quite  clearly  called  us.  "  I  have 
fully  preached  the  Gospel  of  Christ ;    but  my 


AN   EXAMPLE  in 

ambition  has  been  this — not  to  preach  where 
Christ  has  (already)  been  named,  that  I  may 
not  build  upon  another  (man's)  foundation." 
Truly  it  is  the  example  of  one  who  had  put 
away  childish  things ! 

But  the  finest  instance  of  all  is  seen  in 
Philippians  i.  15-18.  St  Paul  and  Apollos 
had  been  friends ;  but  there  were  some 
preachers  who  were  anything  but  friendly, 
Judalstic  Christians  who  thought  his  teaching 
mistaken.  And  when  he  was  in  prison  they 
took  the  opportunity  of  preaching  to  the 
Philippians,  his  best  loved  converts,  according 
to  their  own  ideas,  which  he  was  profoundly 
con-vinced  were  wrong.  There  were,  indeed, 
some  who  preached  Christ  to  them  "out  of 
love,"  but  his  opponents  did  it  "out  of  party 
spirit,  not  with  a  pure  motive,  thinking  to 
aggravate  the  affliction  of  my  Imprisonment." 
It  was  terribly  galling  to  him,  and  they  knew 
it.  But  nevertheless  his  selflessness  rose 
triumphant.  "In  every  way,  whether  in  pre- 
text or  in  truth,  Christ  is  preached,  and  in  this 
I  rejoice."  A  magnificent  instance  of  an  ardent 
worker,  with  very  strong  views   of   his   own, 


112  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

endeavouring  to  keep  the  unity  of  the  Spirit 
in  the  bond  of  peace !  The  Epistle  to  the 
Philippians  was  one  of  his  latest,  and  it  reveals 
the  extent  to  which  his  soul  had  grown.  I 
am  sure  he  did  not  find  it  easy.  It  is  quite 
easy  to  preach  self-crucifixion  ;  but  it  is  agony 
to  be  crucified.  It  was  not  done  without 
unrelenting  sternness  towards  himself:  "lest 
by  any  means  when  I  have  preached 
to  others  I  myself  should  prove  worthless " 
(i  Cor.  ix.  27). 

Almighty  God,  grant  us  grace  so  to  follow 
Thy  blessed  saint  in  selflessness  and  sympathy 
that  we,  like  him,  may  not  prove  worthless 
as  fellow-workers  with  Thee. 


15.  PRAYER 

We  have  been  yielding  ourselves,  for  the 
most  part,  to  the  guidance  of  St  Paul,  as  he 
led  us  by  a  variety  of  paths  to  study  the  thought 
of  growth  from  childhood,  and  to  learn  to  put 
away  "the  elementary  things  of  the  world," 
childish  ideas  about  "being  good"  derived 
from  Judaism,  childish  under-estimation  of 
things  of  real  value,  and  over-estimation  of  mere 
size,  and  the  party  spirit  which  goes  so  far 
to  hinder  the  growth  of  grace  in  the  souls  of 
workers,  and  therefore  in  the  souls  of  those  for 
whom  they  work.  But  is  it  not  very  dishearten- 
ing to  look  at  the  manhood,  the  mature  growth, 
which  he  has  depicted  for  us?  Is  it  not  dis- 
heartening to  a  beginner  struggling  with  his 
pencil  at  a  drawing  lesson  to  be  shewn  a 
masterpiece,  and  be  told  that  that  is  the  kind 
of  thing  that  he  must  aim  at  ?  But  if  we  feel 
inclined  to  despair,  we  must  check  ourselves 
at  once  by  remembering  that  God  is  not  going 


113 


114  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

to  wait  to  take  pleasure  in  us  till  we  have 
reached  the  ideal.  However  elementary  the 
condition  of  our  spiritual  life  may  be,  it  is  a  joy 
to  Him  to  see  u^  grow.  We  ought  to  remind 
ourselves  every  day  of  our  lives  that  what  He 
wants  from  us  is  perpetual  motion — movement 
in  the  direction  of  the  ideal,  however  far  off 
it  may  be.  If  it  is  childish  to  be  satisfied  with 
"being  good,"  it  is  no  less  childish  to  be 
despondent  because  we  are  not  "good."  Tell 
a  small  child  that  he  will  be  able  to  do  some- 
thing "when  he  i$  grown  up,"  and  it  will  seem 
to  him  almost  the  same  as  "never."  Years 
seem  so  long,  and  progress  so  slow.  E  pur  se 
inuove.  Life  does,  after  all,  move  forward. 
By  using  his  present  powers  as  well  as  he  can, 
he  does  grow  in  strength  and  ability,  and 
manhood  with  its  maturity  does  arrive.  He 
must  be  content  to  do  the  next  things  next, 
with  the  great  end  far  off,  but  always  in  sight. 
May  we  not  read  that  meaning,  as  well  as  the 
original  meaning,  into  the  Psalmist's  words,  "  I 
have  set  God  always  before  me  "  }  I  have  set 
before  me  always  the  very  character  and  perfec- 
tion of  God  Himself — unreachable,  but  a  greater 


PRAYER  115 

incentive  to  growth  than  any  other  model. 
That  was  what  St  Paul  meant  when  he  said 
**  Be  ye  imitators  of  God  "  ;  '*  Let  this  mind  be 
in  you  which  wsls  also  in  Christ  Jesus."  The 
child  must  practise — steadily,  interminably 
practise.  And  half  our  spiritual  practice  is  to 
pray,  and  the  other  half  is  to  try. 

But  before  turning  to  the  subject  of  prayer, 
let  us  first  ask,  What  does  every  Christian  feel 
that  he  needs  most  in  an  elementary  stage  in 
his  growth  ?  All  hearts  will  be  ready  with  the 
answer.  We  need  to  overcome,  finally  and 
for  ever,  some  one  or  two  temptations  which 
hinder  us  most.  We  imagine  that  if  w^e  could 
just  get  rid  of  those  one  or  two,  so  that  they 
would  never  trouble  us  again,  all  would  be 
plain  sailing.  There  is,  of  course,  an  element 
of  truth  in  this.  To  fail  frequently  in  one  or 
two  points  weakens  our  will,  and  lowers  our 
spiritual  vitality,  so  that  we  do  not  even  begin 
seriously  to  attempt  progress  with  regard  to 
other  temptations  that  appear  less  important. 
But  every  Christian  who  is  growing  finds,  in 
fact,  that  if  he  has  progressed,  the  next  tempta- 
tion that  stands  in  his  way  looms  larger  and 


ii6  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

more  horrible  than  it  did  before.  To  feel 
increasingly  the  badness  of  "lesser"  sins  is  a 
sure  mark  of  orowth.  Indeed  our  human 
frailty  is  such  that  growth  itself  brings  with  it 
temptations  of  its  own — the  temptation  to  give 
less  strenuous  care  and  watchfulness  against  the 
old  ones,  with  the  imminent  danger  of  relapse  ; 
and  the  temptation  to  indulge  in  spiritual  pride 
in  some  of  its  many  subtle  forms.  Still,  if  we 
are  really  growing,  the  Holy  Spirit  helps  us  to 
recognize  these  as  well  as  other  snares  which 
lie  in  our  path. 

We  are  going  to  set  to  work,  then,  to  practise. 
But  in  doing  so  we  must  be  carefully  on  our 
guard  against  allowing  any  cleavage  in  thought 
between  our  own  life  and  that  of  others.  We 
are  individuals ;  we  possess  a  will,  and  a 
capacity  for  knowledge  and  for  emotion,  which 
are  all  our  own.  And  yet  the  great  mystery 
which  always  confronts  us  is  that  all  human  life 
is  one  life.  Our  growth  is  unthinkable  in 
isolation  ;  it  is  inseparable  from  the  growth  of 
others.  All  these  worketh  that  one  and  the 
same  spirit,  energizing,  striving  after  self- 
fulfilment  in  the  life  of  the  whole. 


PRAYER  117 

And  in  this  growth  Prayer  plays  an  im- 
measurable part.  The  word  "immeasurable," 
like  the  word  ''immense,"  used  with  its  strict 
force,  means  what  it  says.  It  is  non-measurable. 
It  cannot  be  measured  because  it  is  spiritual, 
and  has  to  do  with  results  which  are  independent 
of  space  and  time.  Who  can  measure  the 
effects  of  love,  or  of  knowledge,  or  of  will  ? 
My  ''little"  prayers  can  put  me  into  spiritual 
touch  with  every  soul  that  exists,  every  in- 
dividual expression  of  the  life  of  God.  St 
Chrysostom  described  the  Church  as  consisting 
of  the  faithful  everywhere,  who  are,  or  have 
been,  or  are  yet  to  be.  All  time  and  space 
vanish  when  we  penetrate  to  the  mystery  of 
their  oneness.  If,  then,  growth  in  the  prayer- 
fulness  of  one  soul  helps  towards  the  self- 
fulfilment  of  the  life  of  God,  it  is  not  that  of  a 
little  piece  of  God  in  one  human  life.  We  are 
not  "parts  of  God,"  any  more  than  when  a 
man  loves  his  children  he  has  a  little  piece  of 
love  for  each  of  them.  In  the  orowth  of  each 
soul  the  one  life  of  God,  expressed  in  all  the 
several  souls  of  men,  moves  towards  its  self- 
fulfilment.     The  word  "  vicarious,"  if  carefully 


ii8  THE   INCREASE   OF   GOD 

and  thoughtfully  used,  can  play  an  important 
part  in  Christian  doctrine.  Hence,  since  every 
true  prayer  is  a  movement  towards  God,  a 
movement  of  growth,  prayer  for  our  own 
spiritual  advance  is  a  real  and  rightful  part  of 
our  work  for  mankind.  If  this  is  the  under- 
lying purpose  of  all  our  prayers  for  ourselves, 
they  form  part  of  the  great  and  primary  duty 
of  Intejression. 

But  here,  again,  we  must  beware  of  being 
led  astray  by  notions  of  quantity,  such  as  the 
number  of  people  that  we  pray  for,  or  the 
number  of  prayers  that  we  offer  for  them.  If 
the  value  lay  in  quantity,  prayer  would  be  an 
utterly  hopeless  task.  Its  hopelessness  at  once 
becomes  apparent  if  we  imagine  ourselves  trying 
to  pray,  individually,  by  name,  even  for  the 
people  whom  we  know  personally.  And  what 
are  they  among  the  thousands  of  millions  who 
need  our  help  ?  The  value  of  intercession  lies 
in  the  motive.  A  longing  for  the  self-fulfilment 
of  the  one  life  of  God  energizing  in  men,  a  real, 
deep  desire  for  the  growth  of  the  whole  for  His 
sa!:e,  is  the  only  motive  which  makes  prayer 
worth  while.     There  is  no  true  prayer  about 


PRAYER  119 

any  single  person  or  thing  in  all  the  world 
which  is  not  a  contribution  towards  the  great 
end:  "Thy  kingdom  come,  Thy  will  be  done, 
in  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven."  God  in  Himself, 
Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit,  the  blessed  and 
eternal  Trinity  in  Unity,  is  complete — "in 
heaven "  —  with  an  infinity  of  completeness. 
But  "  in  earth  "He  has  willed,  as  we  have  said, 
that  His  indwelling  life  should  be  incomplete. 
And  all  our  prayers,  no  less  than  our  own 
spiritual  strivings,  must  be  directed  towards  the 
one  universal  aim,  that  He  may  "see  of  the 
travail  of  His  soul,  and  be  satisfied,"  by  gradually, 
"all  in  all,  being  fulfilled." 

This  takes  from  prayer  all  danger  of  littleness, 
or  self-centredness,  all  unworthy  notions  of  per- 
suading or  worrying  God,  by  persistent  reitera- 
tion, into  doing  things  for  us  that  He  otherwise 
might  not  wish  to  do.  In  the  parable  of  the 
unjust  judge  our  Lord  does  not  compare — He 
contrasts — God  with  the  judge.  If  an  unjust 
judge  could  be  worried  into  doing  something 
by  an  importunate  widow,  how  much  more 
readily  will  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  answer 
the  prayers  of  the  elect ;  for,  just  because  they 


120  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

are  the  elect,  their  prayers  may  be  assumed  to 
be  petitions  for  things  that  He  Himself  desires 
more  earnestly  than  they  can — things  for  which 
the  Spirit  itself  intercedes  with  unuttered  groan- 
ings,  dwelling  within  them,  and  **  interceding 
for  them  according  to  (the  will  of)  God."  Our 
prayers  are  not  right  prayers  if  they  are  not  the 
work  of  the  divine  Spirit  within  us,  wanting 
what  God  wants.  But  if  they  are,  it  is  self- 
evident  that  He  is  longing  to  answer  them.  In 
the  mystery  of  his  self-limitation  He  has  (to  an 
extent  which  it  is  outside  our  powers  to  define 
or  calculate)  given  '  His  self- fulfilment  in  man 
into  the  power  of  our  will,  and  rejoices  when 
our  will  and  desires  coincide  with  His.  He 
often  waits  to  do  what  He  Himself  wants  until 
we  pray  for  it,  and  thereby  apply  His  energy 
for  the  purpose.  Of  course,  needless  to  say, 
His  will  is  not  subject  to  our  prayers  in  such  a 
way  that  He  must  always  do  everything  that 
we  happen  to  ask.  Growth  in  prayer,  then,  is 
growth  in  the  intensity  with  which  we  want 
what  God  wants. 

If  such  is  the  nature  of  prayer,  man  can  do 
no  greater  work  for  God.     It  is,  in  fact,  God 


PRAYER  121 

doing  His  own  work  in,  and  by  means  of,  man. 
It  is  the  chiefest  exhibition  of  the  truth  that  *'  it 
is  God  who  energizes  in  you,  both  to  will  and 
to  energize  for  His  pleasure."  But  if  so — and 
here  we  touch  a  further  aspect  which  is  not 
always  sufficiently  recognized — It  necessarily 
follows  that  God  can  do  His  work  which  He 
accomplishes  through  man's  prayers  only  in 
proportion  to  man's  spiritual  growth.  Our 
growth  in  grace  and  our  growth  in  prayer  are 
one  and  the  same  growth.  In  short,  to  put  It 
as  simply  as  possible,  the  more  holy  you  are  tJie 
more  will  your  prayers  accomplish.  Look  at  St 
James  v.  17,  translated  as  literally  as  possible: 
''  The  strenuous  prayer  of  a  righteous  man  has 
great  force  in  its  energy."  Not  only  must  his 
prayer  be  strenuous,  but  he  must  be  *'  righteous "' 
for  his  prayer  to  gain  the  maximum  of  force. 
The  more  that  Christ  "is  formed  in  you,"  the 
more  He  can  do  by  means  of  you,  that  Is  by 
means  of  your  prayer  as  well  as  your  character 
and  influence.  Every  true  prayer,  thank  God, 
has  some  force  in  Its  energy,  because  every  true 
prayer  implies  some  degree,  however  small,  of 
divine   growth.      When   a   prodigal   com.es   to 


122  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

himself  and  pours  out  his  heart  in  penitence,  in 
the  first  real  prayer  he  has  ever  offered,  his 
growth  has  begun,  and  the  force  of  his  prayer 
is  such  that  it  obtains  full,  lavish,  royal  forgive- 
ness. The  reality  and  strenuousness  of  it  are 
the  reality  and  strenuousness  of  the  energy  of 
God's  life  beginning  to  stir  within  him.  But 
the  fact  remains  that  since  the  growth  of  his 
soul  is  the  growth  of  that  divine  life,  the  more 
abundantly  that  it  *'  increaseth  with  the  increase 
of  God,"  the  more  force  he,  obviously,  gains  in 
his  work  oi^  increasing  that  one  and  the  same 
divine  life  in  the  whole  body  of  mankind.  We 
cannot  conceive  of  any  higher  motive  for  holi- 
ness than  this.  It  transcends  all  lower  motives 
— all  danger  of  wishing  to  be  holy  that  we  may 
have  the  satisfaction  of  possessing  a  beautiful 
character  for  our  own  sake,  or  of  gaining  ad- 
miration and  esteem  from  others.  It  rises  out 
of  reach  of  the  criticism  sometimes  levelled 
against  religion  that  all  goodness  and  love  are 
ultimately  selfishness.  It  takes  away  the  faint- 
est thought  of  personal  expedience  or  advantage 
nowj  or  in  the  life  to  come.  O  Lord,  increase 
in  us  true  religion ;  make  us  daily  to  increase  in 


PRAYER  123 

Thy  Holy  Spirit  more  and  more  ;  grant  that  our 
love  may  abound  yet  more  and  more  ;  give  us 
more  grace,  change  us  into  Thine  image  from 
glory  unto  glory  ;  in  order  that  by  the  growth 
of  our  souls,  and  therefore  by  the  growth  of 
our  prayers,  Thou  in  mankind  mayest  move 
towards  Thy  self-fulfilment. 


i6.  OFFERINGS 

All  our  growth  In  holiness,  our  growth  in 
prayer,  and  the  work  that  we  do  for  God  by- 
means  of  both,  find  concrete  expression  in  the 
sacramental  life.  The  relation  between  the 
spiritual  and  the  sacramental  cannot  be  theo- 
retically defined.  We  cannot,  for  instance,  be 
content  with  saying  that  the  one  is  individual 
and  the  other  is  corporate ;  both  are  individual 
and  both  are  corporate.  The  necessity  for 
adding  sacramental  to  other  means  of  grace 
is  a  problem  of  which  we  can  only  say  solvitur 
auibulando.  Insoluble  in  theory,  it  is  solved 
daily  in  practice  ;  and  the  solution  Is  endorsed 
by  the  highest  experience  of  the  holiest  souls 
for  nineteen  centuries.  God  hath  set  one  over 
against  the  other ;  or  rather,  God  hath  joined 
them  together,  and  man  may  not  put  them 
asunder.  If  Christ  is  to  be  formed  in  us,  we 
must  continue  to  receive  Him  into  ourselves  by 

sacramental   as   well   as   spiritual   communion. 

124 


OFFERINGS  125 

And  herein  is  that  saying  true,   ''  To  him  that 
hath   shall    be    given."      Growth    in    holiness 
involves  growth  in  the  capacity  for  receiving. 
A  young  amateur  playing  a  sonata  of  Beethoven 
does  not  gain  from  it  as  much  as  the  advanced 
musician.       The   music   is  the  same,   but  the 
capacity  for  reception  grows.     And  the  same 
is  true   of  the    Holy    Communion.     Christ  is 
always  the  same;    He  offers  Himself  in  His 
fulness  to  every  guest  that  accepts  the  invita- 
tion to  the  feast;  but  "the  torrent  of  pleasure, 
the  richness  of  the  house  of  God,"  means  more 
to  us  in  proportion  as  He  is  being  formed  in 
us  as  the  years  go  by.     To  the  beginner  in 
the  sacramental  life— the  earnest-minded  boy 
or  girl,   for    instance,   who   has   recently  been 
confirmed,  or  anyone  who  has  ceased  to  be  a 
communicant,    and    after  many   years    begins 
again— this  can  be  a  consolation  and  encourage- 
nient  if  he  does  not  feel  that  he  is.  gaining  as 
much  from  the  service  as  he  had  hoped  and 
expected.     There  are,  of  course,  faults  of  our 
own,  want  of  penitence,  want  of  desire,  want  of 
preparation,  which  mar  the  benefits  of  the  feast. 
But  apart  from  these,  the  beginner  must  rest 


126  THE    INCREASE   OF   GOD 

upon  the  truth,  which  Is  the  burden  of  the  whole 
of  this  little  book,  that  the  real  sign  of  a  vigorous 
life  Is  growth.  He  must  keep  on,  gaining 
always  as  much  as  he  can,  and  he  will  slowly 
but  surely  taste  and  see  with  increasing  delight 
that  the  Lord  is  good. 

"  On,  on  !  my  Lord  is  dearer  far 
To-day  than  yesterday '' 

But  above  everything,  we  must  remember  that 
the  give  and  take  of  love  are  strictly  mutual. 
''  It  Is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive." 
The  growth  of  our  power  of  reception  In  the 
Holy  Sacrament  will  be  in  exact  accordance 
with  the  growth  of  our  self-offering.  And 
conversely,  the  more  that  our  soul  grows,  the 
more  we  shall  have  to  offer,  because  we  are 
offering  to  God  the  Christ  that  Is  being  formed 
in  us. 

I  doubt  if  this  thought  plays  the  part  that 
It  should  with  many  Christians  when  they  are 
present  at  the  Holy  Communion.  We  are  all 
accustomed  to  the  glorious  thought  that  we 
offer  to  God  the  ''  full,  perfect,  and  sufficient 
sacrifice,  oblation,  and  satisfaction  for  the  sins 


OFFERINGS  127 

of  the  whole  world,"  and  in  particular  for  our 
own  sins,  or  for  the  sins  of  some  other  definite 
person  or  persons.  (It  is  a  great  help  always 
to  go  to  the  sacred  service  with  some  special 
intention,  thought  over  and  prayed  about  before- 
hand.) But  beside  our  pleadings  for  ourselves 
or  for  others,  God  wants  us,  for  His  own  sake. 
See  how  this  finds  expression  in  the  Communion 
office. 

When  we  offer  our  "alms  and  oblations,"  it 
is  not  only  the  coin  that  we  give,  and  the 
bread  and  wine  or  other  offerings  that  we 
make  in  church  at  the  moment.  These  are 
only  the  sacramental  symbols  of  the  offering  of 
every  penny  we  possess,  everything  that  we 
eat  or  drink,  and  everything  that  money  can 
buy — our  dress  and  personal  possessions,  our 
amusements,  hobbies,  interests.  And  if  we 
want  to  make  our  offering  as  good  as  we  can, 
it  must,  like  all  offerings,  be  prepared  before- 
hand. We  dare  not  offer  to  the  Lord  our  God 
that  which  has  cost  us  nothing.  It  gives  a 
most  wonderful  spur  and  safeguard  to  our 
ordinary  daily  life  to  remember  that  we  are,  at 
every    moment,    preparing   our    next    offering. 


128  THE   INCREASE   OF  GOD 

And  if  we  have  wasted  or  misused  some  of  our 
money,  or  any  other  earthly  possession  or  gift, 
we  have  so  far  spoilt  our  offering.  Here  is  a 
great  opportunity  for  growth.  Our  offering, 
represented  by  the  alms  and  oblations,  is  to 
grow  in  value. 

Again,  we  pray  to  God  :  ''  Receive  these 
our  prayers  which  we  offer  unto  Thy  divine 
Majesty."  And  later  on  we  say:  '' O  Lord 
and  heavenly  Father,  we,*Thy  humble  servants, 
entirely  desire  Thy  fatherly  goodness  merci- 
fully to  accept  this  our  sacrifice  of  praise  and 
thanksgiving."  (We  shall  always  want  to  say 
this  prayer  for  ourselves  if  the  alternative 
prayer  is  read  at  the  service.)  These  sentences 
do  not  mean  merely  that  we  offer  the  prayers, 
and  the  praise  and  thanksgiving,  which  are 
offered  at  the  moment.  They  only  represent 
all  the  prayers,  praises,  and  thanksgivings  that 
we  have  poured  out  day  by  day — hour  by  hour, 
if  possible — since  we  were  last  present  at  the 
Holy  Communion.  And  if  any  of  our  prayers 
during  that  time  have  been  dull  and  listless, 
hurried,  mechanical,  selfish,  despondent,  un- 
believing,   or   our   praises    and    thanksgivings 


OFFERINGS  129 

infrequent,  cold,  or  grudging,  our  offering  has 
been  made  of  less  value  than  it  might  have 
been.  We  want  to  come,  so  to  speak,  armed 
with  a  great  pile  of  prayers  and  praises,  a  well 
prepared  Eucharist,  something  that  it  is  a  joy- 
to  offer,  and  a  joy  to  God  to  receive.  It  is  like 
the  child  with  the  shilling,  making  the  present 
for  her  mother.  The  offering,  when  it  was 
finished,  was  the  eagerly  expected  climax  of  the 
preparation  which  had  kept  her  little  hands  and 
thoughts  busy  for  days  beforehand.  Is  there 
not  here  another  great  opportunity  for  growth  ? 
And  finally,  the  same  truth  is  involved  on 
the  widest  possible  scale  when  we  say  :  "  Here 
we  offer  and  present  unto  Thee,  O  Lord, 
ourselves,  our  souls  and  bodies,  to  be  a 
reasonable,  holy,  and  lively  [living]  sacrifice 
unto  Thee."  What  have  we  been  doing  with 
ourselves,  our  souls  and  bodies,  that  we  can 
ask  God  to  accept  them  as  a  sacrifice  ?  Have 
we  been  growing  in  obedience,  knowledge,  and 
love  ;  in  the  discipline  of  our  bodies,  in  the 
spending  of  ourselves  for  God  and  man  ?  Life 
becomes  a  different  thing,  and  the  sacramental 
life  becomes  an  overwhelming  reality,  if  we 
9 


130  THE   INCREASE   OF  GOD 

understand — and  it  needs  deep  and  frequent 
meditation  to  burn  it  in  upon  our  minds  and 
memories — that  everything  that  we  do,  and 
say,  and  think,  everything  that  we  are,  is  to 
make  up  our  self-offering  at  the  Holy  Com- 
munion. It  is  because  we  offer  Christ,  who 
has  died  for  us,  that  we  can  offer  ourselves  in 
union  with  Him.  And  God  accepts  us  because 
of  what  Christ  is,  and  because  of  what  He  sees 
we  are  going  to  be  if  we  grow. 


Printed  in  Great  Britain  by  The  Darien  Press,  Edinburgh. 


him 


